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Working Paper - 219 - Impact of the business Environment on Output and Productivity in Africa

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Abstract

We develop a general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative effects of the business environment, including regulations, crime, corruption, infrastructure and access to finance, on output and total factor productivity (TFP) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first four dimensions are modeled as a tax on output and the finance dimension is modeled as a borrowing constraint. The model is simulated for a sample of Sub-Saharan African countries using the country-specific financial development and the country-specific joint distribution between productivity and taxes. We find that the simulated output and TFP are highly correlated with that in the data and the model accounts for 48% of the variation of output in the data. Access to finance alone accounts for 39% and the other four dimensions account for 11% of the dispersion in output.

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  • El-Hadj Bah & Lei Fang, 2015. "Working Paper - 219 - Impact of the business Environment on Output and Productivity in Africa," Working Paper Series 2159, African Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:adb:adbwps:2159
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