Employment, Competition and Firm Performance : A Sub-Saharan Africa Perspective

This thesis addresses employment, competition and firm performance with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. The thesis consists of three individual papers and an introductory chapter. The purpose of each paper is to analyze firm performance. The main region of interest is Sub-Saharan Africa where countries in this part of the world are at lower levels of economic development and have experienced economic transition and strong firm investments. The papers contribute to existing industrial organization research by studying the effects of competition on R&D, effects of firm performance on innovation, and the determinants of informal employment and monthly wage earnings. The first paper focuses on firm performance which is found to affect firm innovation positively. This suggests that a firm’s decision regarding the scope of its total sales impacts its innovation capabilities. The second paper investigates the relationship between competition, R&D expenditure and innovation. It is found that a firm’s research efforts increase with an increase in levels of competition but at a diminishing rate confirming a non-linear, inverted-U relationship between competition and research expenditures. The third paper analyzes what determines informal employment and monthly wage earnings in formal firms. The results show that marginal benefit of higher education is lower for informal employees and that returns on education are much higher for workers with higher education

Firm Performance And Innovation In The Developing Countries : Evidence From Firm-Level Survey

This paper investigates the relationship between firm performance and innovation in developing countries using micro data from enterprise surveys. The purpose is to empirically test the importance of firm performance in terms of sales, for a firm’s proneness to innovate specifically in developing countries. A two-stage least squares (2SLS) model is applied to a sample of 2356 firms from the manufacturing and service sectors. Results show that firm performance, defined as sales, is found to be a significant factor contributing to innovation among firms. This relationship holds in manufacturing firms even when distinguished from the services sector. The findings underline the importance of firms’ performance through increased sales. The paper adds to the existing limited research literature on performance and innovation studies in developing countries especially Africa. The paper results differ from previous research studies where focus has been on innovation impact towards performance. As a policy option, developing countries need to improve and promote an increase in firms’ sales that would spur them to introduce a new or substantially improved product or process

Understanding Informal sector Employment in Rwanda

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Unemployment and underemployment in Rwandan rural areas

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