Foreign Presence, Spillovers, and Productivity: Evidence from Ghana

Waldkirch, Andreas and Ofosu, Andra (2008): Foreign Presence, Spillovers, and Productivity: Evidence from Ghana.

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of foreign presence on the productivity of manufacturing industries in Ghana, using firm level panel data. We examine both labor and total factor productivity (TFP), which we compute using the Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) methodology. We control for a number of observed factors as well as unobserved heterogeneity in several dimensions. We find robust evidence that the presence of foreign firms in a sector has a negative effect on domestically owned, but a positive effect on most foreign owned firms. Unlike in recent work on China, it does not appear that the negative level effect is compensated for by a positive growth effect, at least not in any reasonable time period. This finding underscores that care must be exercised in extrapolating results from one country to others. We find no evidence of any wage effects.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Productivity; Spillovers; Firm Level Data; Africa; Ghana
• Subjects: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O55 - Africa; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O2 - Development Planning and Policy > O24 - Trade Policy ; Factor Movement Policy ; Foreign Exchange Policy; F - International Economics > F2 - International Factor Movements and International Business > F23 - Multinational Firms ; International Business

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