Impact of the business environment on output and productivity in Africa

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bah, El-hadj; Fang, Lei
• 署名单位: African Development Bank Group (AfDB); Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Atlanta
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.01.001
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 159-171
• 关键词: Business environment; financial development; Productivity misallocation; African development

摘要

We develop a general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative effects of the business environment, including regulations, crime, corruption, infrastructure and access to finance, on output and total factor productivity (IPP) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first four dimensions are modeled as a tax on output and the finance dimension is modeled as a borrowing constraint. The model is simulated for a sample of Sub-Saharan African countries using the country-specific financial development and the country-specific joint distribution between productivity and taxes. We find that the simulated output and TFP are highly correlated with those in the data and the model accounts for 48% of the variation of output in the data. Access to finance alone accounts for 39% and the other four dimensions account for 11% of the dispersion in output. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.