Mary Hallward-Driemeier

Investment Climate and Firm Performance in Developing Economies

Drawing on recently completed firm‐level surveys in Bangladesh, China, India, and Pakistan, this article investigates the relationship between the investment climate and firm performance. These standardized surveys of large, random samples of firms in common sectors reveal that objective measures of the investment climate vary significantly across countries and across locations within these countries. We focus primarily on measures of the time or monetary cost of different bottlenecks (e.g., days to clear goods through customs, days to get a telephone line, and sales lost to power outages). For many of these costs, the obstacles are lower in China than in Bangladesh or India, which in turn are higher than in Pakistan. There is also systematic variation across cities within countries. We estimate a production function for garment firms and show that total factor productivity is systematically related to the investment climate indicators. Factor returns (wages for a given quality of human capital and rate of profit) are also higher where investment climate is better. These higher returns then have dynamic effects: accumulation and growth at the firm level are higher where the investment climate is better.

Big Constraints to Small Firms’ Growth? Business Environment and Employment Growth across Firms

Using data on more than 56,000 enterprises in 90 countries, this study finds that objective conditions in the business environment vary substantially across firms of different sizes and that there are important nonlinearities in their impact on employment growth. The study focuses on four areas: access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and infrastructure. The results, particularly on the impacts of finance and corruption on growth, depend on whether and how the analysis accounts for the possible endogeneity of the business environment. Controlling for endogeneity revises the finding that small firms benefit most from access to finance, particularly for sources of finance associated with investment and growth. The findings are also sensitive to how “small” is defined. Differentiating micro (fewer than 10 employees) from other small firms shows that, while small firms can be disadvantaged in such an environment, micro firms tend to be proportionally less affected by a weak business climate—and, on occasion, it can help them to grow. Overall, allowing different size classifications provides insights into the impact of the business environment that are lost in more aggregate analyses.

Do bilateral investment treaties attract foreign direct investment? Only a bit - and they could bite

Touted as an important commitment device that attracts foreign investors, the number of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) ratified by developing countries has grown dramatically. The author tests empirically whether BITs have actually had an important role in increasing the foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to signatory countries. While half of OECD FDI into developing countries by 2000 was covered by a BIT, this increase is accounted for by additional country pairs entering into agreements rather than signatory hosts gaining significant additional FDI. The results also indicate that such treaties act more as complements than as substitutes for good institutional quality and local property rights, the rationale often cited by developing countries for ratifying BITs. The relevance of these findings is heightened not only by the proliferation of such treaties, but by recent high profile legal cases. These cases show that the rights given to foreign investors may not only exceed those enjoyed by domestic investors, but expose policymakers to potentially large-scale liabilities and curtail the feasibility of different reform options. Formalizing relationships and protecting against dynamic inconsistency problems are still important, but the results should caution policymakers to look closely at the terms of agreements.

Ownership, Investment Climate and Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese Firms

The importance of a countrys investment climate for economic growth has recently received much attention. In this paper we use a new survey of 1,500 Chinese enterprises in five cities to measure more precisely components of the investment climate and their effects on firm performance. Our firm-level analysis reveals that both ownership and investment climate measures matter for investment, productivity and growth. In particular, firm performance is positively correlated with foreign and domestic private ownership, light regulatory burdens, limited corruption, technological infrastructure and labour market flexibility. In contrast, gains from improving banking access and physical infrastructure are quite limited.

Investment Climate and Employment Growth: The Impact of Access to Finance, Corruption and Regulations Across Firms

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the impact of the investment climate varies across sizes of firms. The differences across size categories come from two sources. First, objective conditions of the business environment do vary systematically by firm types. Micro and small firms have less access to formal finance, pay more in bribes than do larger firms, and face greater interruptions in infrastructure services. Larger firms spend significantly more time dealing with officials and red tape. Second, even controlling for these differences in objective conditions, there is evidence of significant non-linearities in their impact on employment growth. The results suggest strong composition effects: A weak business environment shifts downward the size distribution of firms. In the case of finance and business regulations this occurs by reducing the employment growth of all firms, particularly micro and small firms. On the other hand, corruption and poor access to infrastructure reduce employment growth by affecting the growth of medium size and large firms. With significant differences between firms with less than 10 employees and SMEs, these results indicate significant reforms are needed to spur micro firms to grow into the ranks of the SMEs.

Do Crises Catalyze Creative Destruction? Firm-Level Evidence from Indonesia

Using Indonesian manufacturing census data (1991-2001), this paper rejects the hypothesis that the East Asian crisis unequivocally improved the reallocative process. The correlation between productivity and employment growth did not strengthen and the crisis induced the exit of relatively productive firms. The attenuation of the relationship between productivity and survival was stronger in provinces with comparatively lower reductions in minimum wages, but not due to reduced entry, changing loan conditions, or firms connected to the Suharto regime suffering disproportionately. On the bright side, firms that entered during the crisis were relatively more productive, which helped mitigate the reduction in aggregate productivity.

Firm-level survey provides data on Asia's corporate crisis and recovery

Researchers have decried the limited supply of objective, comparable firm-level data from developing countries. The author describes a new database that helps fill this information gap. The database has detailed records on 4000 firms operating in Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. A comparable survey instrument and sampling methodology was used in each country, and all five studies were carried out simultaneously. The data cover three years (1996-98), allowing for measurements of firm performance before and immediately after the East Asian financial crisis. The questionnaire focused on measuring the impact of the regional financial crisis at the microeconomic level and understanding the longer-run determinants of productivity, employment practices, and financial structure. This database--the first step in the important Firm Analysis and Competitiveness Surveys initiative that the World Bank is spearheading--will be joined by additional country databases. The aim is to fill the gap in much-needed microeconomic evidence using comparable instruments.

Women's Legal Rights Over 50 Years: What is the Impact of Reform?

This study uses a newly compiled database of womens property rights and legal capacity covering 100 countries over 50 years to test for the impact of legal reforms on employment, health, and education outcomes for women and girls. The database demonstrates gender gaps in the ability to access and own property, sign legal documents in ones own name, and have equality or non-discrimination as a guiding principle of the countrys constitution. In the initial period, 75 countries had gender gaps in at least one of these areas and often multiple ones. By 2010, 57 countries had made reforms that strengthened womens economic rights, including 28 countries that had eliminated all of the constraints monitored here. In the cross-section and within countries over time, the removal of gender gaps in rights is associated with greater participation of women in the labor force, greater movement out of agricultural employment, higher rates of women in wage employment, lower adolescent fertility, lower maternal and infant mortality, and higher female educational enrollment. This paper provides evidence on how the strengthening of womens legal rights is associated with important development outcomes.

Trouble in the Making

In the past, manufacturing-led development typically delivered both productivity gains and job creation for unskilled labor. Looking ahead, changing technologies and shifting globalization patterns call the feasibility of manufacturing-led development strategies into question. Things, advanced robotics, and 3-D printing are shifting the criteria that make locations attractive for production and are threatening significant disruptions in employment, particularly for low-skilled labor. These trends raise fears that manufacturing will no longer offer an accessible pathway for low-income countries to develop and, even if feasible, will no longer provide the same dual benefits of productivity gains and job creation for unskilled labor. As a result, the potential risk of growing inequality across and within countries warrants closer attention to the implications of changing technology and globalization patterns. This book looks at changing technology and globalization from the perspective of low- and middle income countries (LMICs) - with an emphasis on analyzing differences across manufacturing subsectors and identifying policy priorities with an eye toward making the most of new opportunities. The book will answer the following questions: how has the global manufacturing landscape changed, and why does this matter for development opportunities?; how are emerging trends in technology and globalization likely to shape the feasibility and desirability of manufacturing-led development in the future?; and if low wages are going to be less important in determining competitiveness, how can less industrialized countries make the most of new opportunities that shifting technologies and globalization patterns may bring?

Ladies First? Firm-level Evidence on the Labor Impacts of the East Asian Crisis

In a crisis, do employers place the burden of adjustment disproportionately on female employees? Relying on household and labor force data, existing studies of the distributional impact of crises have not been able to address this question. This paper uses Indonesias census of manufacturing firms to analyze employer responses and to identify mechanisms by which gender differences in impact may arise, notably differential treatment of men and women within firms as well as gender sorting across firms that varied in their exposure to the crisis. On average, women experienced higher job losses than their male colleagues within the same firm. However, the aggregate adverse effect of such differential treatment was more than offset by women being disproportionately employed in firms hit relatively less hard by the crisis. The null hypothesis that there were no gender differences in wage adjustment is not rejected. Analyzing how employer characteristics impact labor market adjustment patterns contributes to the understanding of who is vulnerable in volatile times.