Sources of firm-level heterogeneity in labour productivity in Egypt's manufacturing sector

2021
Egypt's ranking in the World Competitiveness Report has been deteriorating. While boosting competitiveness requires reforms on several important fronts such as the improvement of infrastructure, reform of institutions, etc., raising Egypt's low labour productivity is perhaps the most pressing reform. This is because low labour productivity is eroding the country's comparative advantage in low wages vis-a-vis competitors like China. This paper identifies the correlates of labour productivity in Egypt's manufacturing sector. By dichotomising firms into low- and high-productivity regimes, we find that sources of heterogeneity in labour productivity are capital intensity, size, manager quality, ratio of female labour to total labour, formality, age, average wage and sectoral average wage. This suggests that factors underlying low labour productivity are internal to the firm. On the other hand, we find that firms in each regime respond differently to various determinants of labour productivity. This must be taken into consideration when designing policies to increase productivity.
EMPIRICAL ECONOMICS
页码:2589-2612|卷号:60|期号:5
ISSN:0377-7332
收录类型
SSCI
发表日期
2021
学科领域
循证经济学
国家
埃及
语种
英语
DOI
10.1007/s00181-020-01847-x
其他关键词
TRADE LIBERALIZATION; ORGANIZATION; COMPETITION; TOWNSHIP; IMPACT
EISSN
1435-8921
资助机构
Economic Research Forum for Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey
资助信息
This research was supported by the Economic Research Forum for Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey, apart from funding, and the forum has no other involvement in this research.
被引频次(WOS)
0
被引更新日期
2022-01
来源机构
Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) American University Cairo
关键词
Labour productivity Competitiveness Heterogeneity Egypt Manufacturing Mixture model