Marie-Ange Véganzonès-Varoudakis

Productivity and Technical Efficiency in Indian States' Manufacturing: The Role of Infrastructure

of India (New Delhi: Government of India, various issues).

Uncertainty, economic reforms and private investment in the Middle East and North Africa

During the 1980s and the 1990s, private investment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has on average shown a decreasing or stagnant trend. This contrasts with the situation of the Asian economies, where private investment has always been more dynamic. In this article, it is empirically shown for a panel of 39 developing economies among which four MENA countries – that in addition to the traditional determinants of investment such as the growth anticipations and the real interest rate – government policies explain MENAs low investment rate. Insufficient structural reforms, which have most of the time led to poor financial development and deficient trade openness have been a crucial factor for the deficit in private capital formation. The economic uncertainties of the region have represented another factor of the firms decisions not to invest. These uncertainties consisted of the external debt burden and various measures of volatility.

How does exchange rate policy affect manufactured exports in MENA countries

This paper shows that, during the 1970s and 1980s, MENA economies were characterized by a significant overvaluation of their currency. This overvaluation has had a cost in terms of competitiveness. To determine the degree of overvaluation of the MENA currencies, an indicator of misalignment was developed based on the estimation of an equilibrium exchange rate (Edwards, Exchange Rate Misalignment in Developing Countries, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988). The empirical work was based on a panel of 53 developing countries, ten of which are MENA economies. Although overvaluation decreased in the 1990s, probably due to flexibilization of the exchange rate regime in some MENA countries and to better macroeconomic management in others, misalignment remained higher than in other regions. This may be explained by the MENA countries’ delay in adopting more flexible exchange rates, as well as in reforming their economies. In terms of competitiveness, the estimation of an export equation has shown that manufactured exports have been significantly affected by the overvaluation of the MENA currencies. Countries that already had a more diversified economy benefited more from the decreased overvaluation in the 1990s. These countries also saw a continuous rise in diversification of their manufactured exports, resulting from the significant decline in exchange rate misalignment.

Governance and Private Investment in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper addresses the issue of the low level of private investment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with special emphasis on the role of governance. Based on the existing literature, we have categorized what types of governance institutions are more detrimental to entrepreneurial investments. We have then estimated a simultaneous model of private investment and governance quality where economic policies concurrently explain both variables. Our empirical results show that governance plays a significant role in private investment decisions. This result is particularly true in the case of “Administrative Quality” in the form of control of corruption, bureaucratic quality, investment-friendly profile of administration, and law and order, as well as for “Political Stability”. Evidence in favor of “Public Accountability” seems, however, less robust. Our estimations also stress that structural reforms -- such as financial development and trade openness – and human development affect private investment decisions directly, and/or through their positive impact on governance. These findings bring new empirical evidence on the subject of private investment in the developing world and in MENA countries in particular.

FIRM PRODUCTIVITY AND INVESTMENT CLIMATE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: HOW DOES MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA MANUFACTURING PERFORM?

Firm productive performances in five Middle East and North African (MENA) economies and eight manufacturing industries are compared to those in 17 other developing countries. Although the broad picture hides some heterogeneity, enterprises in MENA often performed inadequately compared to MENA status of middle-income economies, with the exception of Morocco and, to some extent, Saudi Arabia. Firm competitiveness is a more constant constraint, with a unit labor cost higher than in most competitor countries, as well as investment climate (IC) deficiencies. The empirical analysis also points out how IC matters for firm productivity through the quality of infrastructure, the experience and education of the labor force, the cost and access to financing, and different dimensions of the government-business relationship. These findings bear important policy implications by showing which dimensions of the IC, in which industry, could help manufacturing in MENA to be more competitive in the globalization context.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Estimating impact of infrastructure on productivity and efficiency of Indian manufacturing

Drawing on a recent data set of the Indian manufacturing industry for the period 1994–2008, this article shows for eight sectors that core infrastructure matters in determining Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and Technical Efficiency (TE). Results suggest that the impact is rather strong on both measures (elasticity of 0.32 and 0.17, respectively). This finding is of particular importance in the Indian context characterized by infrastructure bottlenecks and strongly supports the view that a lack of infrastructure can hamper growth in developing countries.

Infrastructure, ICT and Firms’ Productivity and Efficiency: An Application to the Indian Manufacturing

This paper highlights the role of infrastructure and information and communication technology (ICT) in the context of total factor productivity (TFP) and technical efficiency (TE) of the Indian manufacturing sector for the period 1994– 2008. We use advanced estimation techniques to overcome problems of non-stationary, omitted variables, endogeneity and reverse causality by applying fully modified OLS, panel co-integration and system GMM. Estimation results suggest that the impact of infrastructure and ICT is rather strong. Interestingly, sectors exposed relatively more to foreign competition (e.g. Transport Equipment, Textile, Chemicals, Metal and Metal Products) are more sensitive to infrastructure deficiencies. This finding implies that improving infrastructure and ICT would benefit these sectors to a large extent, thus contributing to Indias competitiveness. This outcome is of particular importance in the context of infrastructure bottlenecks in India.

Investment climate, outward orientation and manufacturing firm productivity: New empirical evidence

ABSTRACT Drawing on the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we revisit the link between firm-level investment climate and productive performance for a panel of enterprises surveyed twice in time in 70 developing countries and 11 manufacturing industries. We take advantage of the time dimension available for an increasing number of countries to tackle the endogeneity issue stressed in previous studies. We also use pertinent econometric techniques to address other biases inherent in the data (e.g.measurement errors, missing observations and multicollinearity). Our results reinforce previous findings by validating, with a larger than usual sample of countries and industries, the importance of a larger set of environment variables. We show that infrastructure quality, information & communication technologies, skills and experience of the labour force, cost of and access to financing, security and political stability, competition and government relation contribute to firms’ and countries’ performances gap. The empirical analysis also illustrates that firms which choose an outward orientation have higher productivity level. Nevertheless, outward oriented enterprises are more sensitive to investment climate limitations. These findings have important policy implications by showing which dimensions of the business environment, in which industry, could help manufacturing firms to be more competitive in the present context of increasing globalization.