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Railway transport generally has the advantage for large-volume, long-haul freight operations. Africa possesses significant railway assets. However, many rail lines are currently not operational because of the lack of maintenance. The paper recasts light on the impact of rail transportation on firm productivity, using micro data collected in Tanzania. To avoid the endogeneity problem, the instrumental variable technique is used to estimate the impact of rail transport. The paper shows that the overall impact of rail use on firm costs is significant despite that the rail unit rates are set lower when the shipping distance is longer. Rail transport is a cost-effective option for firms. However, the study finds that firms' inventory is costly. This is a disadvantage of using rail transport. Rail operations are unreliable, adding more inventory costs to firms. The implied elasticity of demand for transport services is estimated at ?1.01 to ?0.52, relatively high in absolute terms. This indicates the rail users' sensitivity to prices as well as severity of modal competition against truck transportation. The study also finds that firm location matters to the decision to use rail services. Proximity to rail infrastructure is important for firms to take advantage of rail benefits.

Firm Productivity --- Inventory Costs --- Rail Transport --- Transport Infrastructure

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Economic growth in the Sub-Saharan Africa region has been plagued by a series of shocks-wars, political instability, natural disasters, epidemics, terms-of-trade deterioration, and sudden stops in capital inflows-that have had lingering effects on productivity and growth. Within the overall productivity gap of the region are substantial differences across the sectors of economic activity and production units. Boosting Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies and Institutions to Promote Efficiency documents the productivity trends in Sub-Saharan Africa in three different dimensions, assessing productivity at the aggregate level, the sectoral level, and the establishment level. It characterizes the evolution of productivity in the region relative to other countries and regions, as well as country groups in Africa, classified by their degree of natural resource abundance and condition of fragility. The volume suggests that the persistence of the productivity gap in Africa vis-a-vis the technological frontier can be attributed to the slow accumulation of physical and human capital relative to the region's growing population, as well as the poor allocation of these resources. These allocative inefficiencies are the outcome of policies and institutions that introduce distortions in the decision-making process of individuals. Hence, the volume assesses the implications of production decisions across agricultural farms and manufacturing firms. It presents evidence on aggregate productivity from the perspective of production units, using recent household surveys for farmers and firm-level surveys for select countries, as well as frontier estimation techniques. It documents the extent of severe resource misallocation across agricultural and manufacturing production units. These distortions decelerate the growth of the production units, disincentivize their adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies, and reduce the ability of their peers to learn new techniques. Boosting Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa highlights the adoption of digital technologies to reduce some of these market frictions. Mobile money has increased financial inclusion in several countries, and digital financial technologies have given individuals access to savings instruments and loan products. Enhancing access to credit can help individuals invest in schooling and overcome the costs of formality. The volume discusses further avenues of research that may provide additional insights on the productivity dynamics across countries in the region, and it identifies the different channels of policy transmission to enhance productivity. The empirical work presented can help to guide the design of policy in the region.

E-books --- Agriculture productivity --- Farm productivity --- Firm productivity --- Fragility --- Policy Agenda --- Productivity growth

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Embedding management and operational practices survey in a broader firm capabilities survey, this paper finds that an average firm in Croatia scores 0.532 on structured management practices, which is farther from the frontier (0.615 in the United States). This average, however, masks the wide heterogeneity in management practices among firms. Relative to advanced countries, a large share of firms in Croatia are badly managed. Management is particularly worse in services and more so in non-knowledge intensive services. Better managed firms show superior performance: improving the management score from the 10th decile to the 90th decile is expected to improve sales per employee by 36 percent, profits by 33 percent and the probability to innovate by 11 percent. Likewise, better managed firms more likely use sophisticated technologies and have a higher probability of accessing external finance. What drives firms to improve their management practices? As elsewhere in the world, global linkages of firms matter. However, unlike the evidence in advanced countries, management capabilities in Croatia is negatively associated with firm age, especially in services, indicating the possibility of allocative inefficiency, where learning and selection mechanism does not weed out the badly managed firms perhaps due to the lack of pro-competitive forces.

Competition --- Competitiveness --- Competitiveness and Competition Policy --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Firm Productivity --- Management Practices --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics

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This paper examines the dynamics and characteristics of high-growth firms in Tunisia. Further knowledge about the dynamics of these firms can inform the design of business support policies, especially toward small and medium-size firms. The analysis suggests that between 1999 and 2015, about 9 to 10.5 percent of the firms in Tunisia achieved high-growth status per year, on average, depending on the definition used, and these shares have been remarkably stable over time. Although a small share of firms achieves high growth annually, almost one in every three firms that survive for more than a decade has achieved high-growth status at least once. High-growth status is more prevalent among small and young firms, as well as firms that export, import, or receive foreign direct investments.

Business Development Services --- Direct Foreign Investment --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Entrepreneurship --- Firm Performance --- Firm Productivity --- Firm Size --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics --- Small and Medium Size Enterprises

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The informal sector is an important source of livelihoods and jobs for a vast majority of people in developing countries. However, there is concern that it may undermine growth and development of the formal sector. For instance, the growth literature indicates that research and development activity and innovation are a key driver of long-term growth. How does the competition that formal sector firms face from informal sector firms affect research and development activity by the formal firms The present paper attempts to answer this question using firm-level survey data for small and medium-size enterprises in a large cross-section of mostly developing countries. The results show that higher informal competition leads to greater a likelihood of spending on research and development by formal firms. For the most conservative baseline specification, a one standard deviation increase in informal competition leads to an increase of 5.2 percentage points in the likelihood of spending on research and development by formal firms. This is a large increase given that less than 18 percent of the firms in the sample engage in research and development activity. Further, consistent with the "parasite" view of informality, the positive impact of informal competition on research and development activity is magnified when the business environment is less conducive to operating in the formal sector compared with informal sector due to factors such as higher corruption, weaker rule of law, more burdensome business regulations, and a higher tax rate on profits. As expected, there is no impact of informal competition on research and development activity among large firms. The main findings are robust to several controls, alternative specifications, and endogeneity checks.

Competition --- Firm Productivity --- Informality --- Innovation --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics --- Research and Development --- Science and Technology Development --- Small and Medium Size Enterprises --- Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises