Asif Islam

Does Mandating Nondiscrimination in Hiring Practices Influence Women's Employment? Evidence Using Firm-Level Data

This study explores the relationship between mandating a nondiscrimination clause in hiring practices along gender lines and the employment of women versus men in 58 developing countries. The study finds a strong positive relationship between a nondiscrimination in hiring clause and womens relative to mens employment. The relationship is robust to several controls at the firm and country levels. The results also show sharp heterogeneity in the relationship between the nondiscrimination in hiring clause and womens versus mens employment, with the relationship being much larger in richer countries and in countries with more women in the population as well as among relatively smaller firms.

Are There More Female Managers in the Retail Sector? Evidence from Survey Data in Developing Countries

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 exploration of the data confirm a significantly higher presence of female managers in services vs. manufacturing, the finding 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 greater presence of female managers in the retail sector vs. manufacturing is much higher among the relatively small firms and firms located in the relatively small cities. These findings could serve as useful inputs for the design of optimal policy measures aimed at promoting gender equality in a country.

Women Managers and the Gender-Based Gap in Access to Education: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in Developing Countries

ABSTRACT A number of studies explore the differences in mens and womens labor market participation rates and wages. Some of these differences have been linked to gender disparities in education access and attainment. The present paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the relationship between the proclivity of a firm having a top woman manager and access to education among women relative to men in the country. The study combines the literature on womens careers in management, which has mostly focused on developed countries, with the development literature that has emphasized the importance of access to education. Using firm-level data for seventy-three developing countries in 2007–10, the study finds strong evidence that countries with a higher proportion of top women managers also have higher enrollment rates for women relative to men in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.

Entrepreneurship and the Allocation of Government Spending Under Imperfect Markets

Previous studies have established a negative relationship between total government spending and entrepreneurship activity. However, the relationship between the composition of government spending and entrepreneurial activity has been woefully under-researched. This paper fills this gap in the literature by empirically exploring the relationship between government spending on social and public goods and entrepreneurial activity under the assumption of credit market imperfections. By combining macroeconomic government spending data with individual-level entrepreneurship data, the analysis finds a positive relationship between increasing the share of social and public goods at the cost of private subsidies and entrepreneurship while confirming a negative relationship between total government consumption and entrepreneurial activity. The implication may be that expansion of total government spending includes huge increases in private subsidies, at the cost of social and public goods, and is detrimental for entrepreneurship.

Does Paternity Leave Matter for Female Employment in Developing Economies? Evidence from Firm Data

ABSTRACT Analysis using firm-level data for a sample of 33,302 firms in 53 developing countries shows that women’s employment among private firms is significantly higher in countries that mandate paternity leave versus those that do not. A conservative estimate suggests an increase of 6.8 percentage points in the proportion of women workers associated with mandating paternity leave. The empirical specification is immune to spurious correlations that affect the level of women and men employment equally and also robust to a large number of controls for country and firm characteristics.

An exploration of the relationship between police presence, crime, and business in developing countries

Economic theory predicts that a rise in police presence will reduce criminal activity. However several studies in the literature have found mixed results. This study adds to the literature by exploring the relationship between the size of the police force and crime experienced by firms. Using survey data for about 12,000 firms in a cross-section of 27 developing countries, the study finds that increasing the size of the police force is negatively associated with crime experienced by firms. The results are confirmed using a panel of firms for a subset of countries for which data are available. The study also finds that this negative relationship is stronger under certain macro-economic circumstances.

The time cost of documents to trade

The article shows that the number of documents required to export and import tend to increase the time cost of shipments. However, the increase in the time cost of increased documentation is much larger for countries that are relatively poor and large in size. One interpretation here is that the relatively rich countries that have more resources and the relatively small countries that rely more on trade invest more in building efficient documentation systems. Our findings suggest caution in interpreting how input-based measures, such as the number of required documents to trade, affect outcome measures.

Use of Imported Inputs and the Cost of Importing: Evidence from Developing Countries

For a representative sample of manufacturing firms in 26 countries, the paper shows that changes in the cost of importing over time is significantly and negatively correlated with changes in the percentage of firm’s material inputs that are of foreign origin. In short, import costs matter and significantly so for a firm’s decision to use foreign vs. domestic inputs. This is important as recent studies indicate a significant positive effect of the use foreign input on firm productivity and growth. Furthermore, we show that there may be a non-linear relationship between import costs and imports. We hope that the present paper will inspire more work towards the determinants of the use of imported inputs by firms in developing and developed countries.

Government Spending and Economic Growth in a Context of Market Imperfections

This paper identifies a key feature of the structure of government spending as a determinant of economic growth: the public goods/ private goods expenditure ratio, where public goods are broadly defined as expenditures that mitigate market failure. The paper develops a theoretical and empirical analysis which corroborates the hypothesis that shifting government expenditures from private goods to public goods, promotes economic efficiency and growth. The empirical analysis using data for 87 countries from 1980-2004, shows that increasing the share of public goods by one half of a standard deviation induces a one percentage point increase in the annual per capita growth rate of GDP for the average country in the sample. This result is robust to stringent sensitivity checks.

The labor productivity gap between female and male-managed firms in the formal private sector

This study analyzes gender differences in labor productivity in the formal private sector, using data from 128 mostly developing economies. The results reveal a sizable unconditional gap, with labor productivity being approximately 11 percent lower among female- than male-managed firms. The analyses are based on female management, which is more strongly associated with labor productivity than female participation in ownership, which has been the focus of most previous studies. Decomposition techniques reveal several factors that contribute to lower labor productivity of female-managed firms relative to male-managed firms: fewer female- than male-managed firms protect themselves from crime and power outages, have their own websites, and are (co-) owned by foreigners. In addition, in the manufacturing sector, female-managed firms are less capitalized and have lower labor cost than male-managed firms.