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Are Large Informal Firms More Productive Than The Small Informal Firms? Evidence From Firm-Level Surveys In Africa, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam
Are Large Informal Firms More Productive Than The Small Informal Firms? Evidence From Firm-Level Surveys In Africa, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam
Mohammad Amin
Using data for over 500 informal or unregistered firms in seven countries in Africa, this study explores how labor productivity varies between small and large informal firms. We find robust evidence that small informal firms have higher labor productivity than large informal firms. Thus, even though poor performance of informal firms is typically attributed to their small size vis-à-vis registered or formal sector firms, incremental increases in the size of informal firms does not necessarily imply a narrowing of the formal-informal firm productivity gap.
Elasticity Of Substitution And The Stagnation Of Italian Productivity, Enrico Saltari, Daniela Federici
Elasticity Of Substitution And The Stagnation Of Italian Productivity, Enrico Saltari, Daniela Federici
Enrico Saltari
The aim of this paper is to investigate the roots of the stagnation in the Italian total factor productivity (TFP). The analysis focuses on the specific pattern of technical progress in determining the dynamics of the TFP. This analysis cannot be done with Cobb-Douglas technology, but requires the employment of a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function that allows distinguishing between the direction and the bias of technical progress. We employ a CES specification embodying both labor- and capital-augmenting technical change, with a σ less than 1. We obtain three main results. (1) There seems to have been a …