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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Relevance Of Firm-Size For The Informal Sector, Mohammad Amin Jun 2013

The Relevance Of Firm-Size For The Informal Sector, Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

Using newly collected on informal firms in 11 countries in Africa, we explore whether firm-size matters at all for the structure, conduct and performance of the firms. While firm-size is known to be an important attribute of the firms in the formal sector, it is not obvious what the relevance of firm-size is for the informal sector. Informal firms are small, many of them run alone by the owner, and have limited variation in size. Notwithstanding the limited variation in firm-size, our results show that firm-size is highly correlated with a number of firm characteristics such as job growth, labor …


Imports Of Intermediate Inputs And Country Size, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam Jun 2013

Imports Of Intermediate Inputs And Country Size, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam

Mohammad Amin

The present paper analyzes the relationship between country size and the use of imported intermediate inputs by firms in 76 developing countries. Recent evidence indicates that the use of imported inputs can have a large positive effect on productivity and growth thus motivating a better understanding of the determinants of imported inputs. Our results confirm that relative to large countries, firms in small countries are both likely to use more imported inputs and a larger share of imported inputs in their total inputs. Interestingly, adjusting for the mean level of imports of inputs and exports of goods in our sample, …


Gender Based Differences In Managerial Experience: The Case Of Informal Firms In Rwanda, Mohammad Amin, Khrystyna Kushnir May 2013

Gender Based Differences In Managerial Experience: The Case Of Informal Firms In Rwanda, Mohammad Amin, Khrystyna Kushnir

Mohammad Amin

The paper contributes to the literature on gender-based disparity in human capital by extending existing results on educational attainment to the number of years of experience that female vs. male managers have among informal or unregistered firms. Using the case of Rwanda, results show that the number of years of experience for female managers is significantly lower equaling 80-88 percent of their male counterparts. We also find that this gender disparity is higher among the relatively older managers and among firms in the relatively less developed city of Butare compared with the more developed city of Kigali.


Do Retail Firms Favor Female Managers? Evidence From Survey Data In Developing Countries, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam May 2013

Do Retail Firms Favor Female Managers? Evidence From Survey Data In Developing Countries, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam

Mohammad Amin

Using firm-level data for 87 developing countries, the paper analyzes how the likelihood of a firm having female vs. male top manager varies across sectors. The service sector is often considered to be more favorable towards women compared with men vis-à-vis the manufacturing sector. While our results confirm a significantly higher presence of female managers in services vs. manufacturing, the result is entirely driven by the retail firms with little contribution from other service sectors such as wholesale, construction and other services. We also find that the higher presence of female managers in the retail sector vs. manufacturing is much …