IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ioe/doctra/399.html

The Efficiency Cost of the Kafala in Dubai: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Raimundo Soto

    (Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.)

  • Rosalía Vásquez

Abstract

The Kafala (or sponsorship) system is the key instrument behind the economic development of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and most Middle East economies. The system governs both labor migration and foreign investment by assigning a native-UAE sponsor to each migrant worker and each foreign investor. Sponsors enjoy significant command over these factors and extract sizable economic rents. Firms in free-zones, in contrast, are exempt from the Kafala system. Therefore, they provide an appropriate counterfactual to study the effect of policy regulations on technical efficiency. Using a representative sample of 600 firms of Dubai we estimate stochastic frontier models to identify and compare the degree of technical inefficiency between firms operating under the Kafala system and those in free zones. Our results suggest that on average technical inefficiency resulting from the Kafala amounts to 6.6% of total costs (or 11% of profits). Inefficiency is also greater among firms in Main Dubai in all economic sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Raimundo Soto & Rosalía Vásquez, 2011. "The Efficiency Cost of the Kafala in Dubai: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Documentos de Trabajo 399, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    • Handle: RePEc:ioe:doctra:399
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economia.uc.cl/docs/doctra/dt-399.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip Stevens, 2004. "Accounting for Background Variables in Stochastic Frontier Analysis," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 239, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    2. Godfrey Yeung & Vincent Mok, 2008. "ISO 9000 certification and technical efficiency of foreign‐financed manufacturing firms in southern China," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(5), pages 385-404, September.
    3. Robert J. Barro, 2013. "Inflation and Economic Growth," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(1), pages 121-144, May.
    4. Battese, George E. & Coelli, Tim J., 1988. "Prediction of firm-level technical efficiencies with a generalized frontier production function and panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 387-399, July.
    5. Berger, Allen N. & Humphrey, David B., 1997. "Efficiency of financial institutions: International survey and directions for future research," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 175-212, April.
    6. Reifschneider, David & Stevenson, Rodney, 1991. "Systematic Departures from the Frontier: A Framework for the Analysis of Firm Inefficiency," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 32(3), pages 715-723, August.
    7. Jean-François Fagnart & Omar Licandro & Franck Portier, 1999. "Firm Heterogeneity, Capacity Utilization and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 2(2), pages 433-455, April.
    8. Xavier Sala-I-Martin, 1997. "Transfers, Social Safety Nets, and Economic Growth," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 44(1), pages 81-102, March.
    9. Martin, Philippe & Rogers, Carol Ann, 1997. "Stabilization Policy, Learning-by-Doing, and Economic Growth," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(2), pages 152-166, April.
    10. Jondrow, James & Knox Lovell, C. A. & Materov, Ivan S. & Schmidt, Peter, 1982. "On the estimation of technical inefficiency in the stochastic frontier production function model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 233-238, August.
    11. Caudill, Steven B & Ford, Jon M & Gropper, Daniel M, 1995. "Frontier Estimation and Firm-Specific Inefficiency Measures in the Presence of Heteroscedasticity," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(1), pages 105-111, January.
    12. William C. Horrace & Peter Schmidt, 2002. "Confidence Statements for Efficiency Estimates from Stochastic Frontier Models," Econometrics 0206006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Battese, G E & Coelli, T J, 1995. "A Model for Technical Inefficiency Effects in a Stochastic Frontier Production Function for Panel Data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 325-332.
    14. Meeusen, Wim & van den Broeck, Julien, 1977. "Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 18(2), pages 435-444, June.
    15. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    16. Abigail Barr, 1995. "The missing factor: entrepreneurial networks, enterprises and economic growth in Ghana," CSAE Working Paper Series 1995-11, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    17. Leopold Simar & Paul Wilson, 2010. "Inferences from Cross-Sectional, Stochastic Frontier Models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 62-98.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roukaya El Houda & Pankhuri Prasad, 2022. "Labor Market Dynamics in the UAE: Challenges in Transitioning to a Knowledge Economy," Growth Lab Working Papers 255, Harvard's Growth Lab.
    2. Hertog, Steffen, 2017. "Making wealth sharing more efficient in high-rent countries: the citizens’ income," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101305, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Young Hoon Lee, 2009. "Frontier Models and their Application to the Sports Industry," Working Papers 0903, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy), revised 2009.
    2. Christopher F. Parmeter & Hung-Jen Wang & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2017. "Nonparametric estimation of the determinants of inefficiency," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 205-221, June.
    3. Holtkamp, A.M. & Brummer, B., 2018. "Environmental efficiency of smallholder rubber production," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277518, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Christine Amsler & Artem Prokhorov & Peter Schmidt, 2014. "Using Copulas to Model Time Dependence in Stochastic Frontier Models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(5-6), pages 497-522, August.
    5. Dairo Estrada & Poldy Osorio, 2004. "Effects of Financial Capital on Colombian Banking Efficiency," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 22(47), pages 162-201, December.
    6. Getu Hailu & B. James Deaton, 2016. "Agglomeration Effects in Ontario’s Dairy Farming," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1055-1073.
    7. Seunghwa Rho & Peter Schmidt, 2015. "Are all firms inefficient?," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 327-349, June.
    8. Paul, Satya & Shankar, Sriram, 2018. "Modelling Efficiency Effects in a True Fixed Effects Stochastic Frontier," MPRA Paper 87437, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Manlagnit, Maria Chelo V., 2015. "Basel regulations and banks’ efficiency: The case of the Philippines," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 72-85.
    10. Mishra, Ashok K. & Bairagi, Subir & Velasco, Maria Lourdes & Mohanty, Samarendu, 2018. "Impact of access to capital and abiotic stress on production efficiency: Evidence from rice farming in Cambodia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 215-222.
    11. Kashiwagi, Kenichi & Mtimet, Nadhem & Zaibet, Lokman & Nagaki, Masakazu, 2010. "Technical efficiency of olive oil manufacturing and efficacy of modernization programme in Tunisia," 2010 AAAE Third Conference/AEASA 48th Conference, September 19-23, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa 96195, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    12. Satya Paul & Sriram Shankar, 2020. "Estimating efficiency effects in a panel data stochastic frontier model," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 163-180, April.
    13. Gian Carlo Scarsi, 1999. "Local Electricity Distribution in Italy: Comparative Efficiency Analysis and Methodological Cross-Checking," Working Papers 1999.16, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    14. Bernhard Brümmer & Jens‐Peter Loy, 2000. "The Technical Efficiency Impact of Farm Credit Programmes: A Case Study of Northern Germany," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 405-418, September.
    15. Tim J. Coelli, 1995. "Recent Developments In Frontier Modelling And Efficiency Measurement," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 39(3), pages 219-245, December.
    16. Marko Košak & Peter Zajc & Jelena Zorić, 2009. "Bank efficiency differences in the new EU member states," Baltic Journal of Economics, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies, vol. 9(2), pages 67-90, December.
    17. Ali M. Oumer & Amin Mugera & Michael Burton & Atakelty Hailu, 2022. "Technical efficiency and firm heterogeneity in stochastic frontier models: application to smallholder maize farms in Ethiopia," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 213-241, April.
    18. Salem Gheit, 2022. "A Stochastic Frontier Analysis of the Human Capital Effects on the Manufacturing Industries’ Technical Efficiency in the United States," Athens Journal of Business & Economics, Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), vol. 8(3), pages 215-238, July.
    19. Peter Dawson & Stephen Dobson & Bill Gerrard, 2000. "Estimating Coaching Efficiency in Professional Team Sports: Evidence from English Association Football," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 47(4), pages 399-421, September.
    20. Amjadi, Golnaz & Lundgren, Tommy, 2022. "Is industrial energy inefficiency transient or persistent? Evidence from Swedish manufacturing," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ioe:doctra:399. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jaime Casassus (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iepuccl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.