Economists have shown that large and persistent differences in productivity levels across businesses are ubiquitous. This finding has shaped research agendas in a number of fields, including (but not limited to) macroeconomics, industrial organization, labor, and trade. This paper surveys and evaluates recent empirical work addressing the question of why businesses differ in their measured productivity levels. The causes are manifold, and differ depending on the particular setting. They include elements sourced in production practices -- and therefore over which producers have some direct control, at least in theory -- as well as from producers' external operating environments. After evaluating the current state of knowledge, I lay out what I see are the major questions that research in the area should address going forward. (JEL D24, G31, L11, M10, O30, O47)

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What Determines Productivity

We survey the empirical literature analyzing the process of enterprise restructuring in transition economies. The survey provides new insights into the relative effectiveness of different reform policies, and into how this effectiveness varies across regions. We study the effects of privatization, the importance of different types of owners, the effects of foreign and domestic competition, the consequences of soft budgets, and the role of managerial incentives and managerial human capital, on enterprise restructuring.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=238716

Enterprise Restructuring in Transition: A Quantitative Survey

We survey the empirical literature analyzing the process of enterprise restructuring in transition economies. The survey provides new insights into the relative effectiveness of different reform policies, and into how this effectiveness varies across regions. We study the effects of privatization, the importance of different types of owners, the effects of foreign and domestic competition, the consequences of soft budgets, and the role of managerial incentives and managerial human capital, with regard to enterprise restructuring.

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Which is the tighter constraint on private sector investment: weak property rights or limited access to external finance? From a survey of new firms in post-communist countries, we find that weak property rights discourage firms from reinvesting their profits, even when bank loans are available. Where property rights are relatively strong, firms reinvest their profits; where they are relatively weak, entrepreneurs do not want to invest from retained earnings.

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Property Rights and Finance

The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in a rapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and vary across regions, coinciding with differences in policies and institutional development. In China relatively more estimates suggest that privatization to domestic owners improves the level of performance. Concentrated private ownership has a stronger positive effect on performance than dispersed ownership in the post-communist economies, but foreign joint ventures rather than wholly owned foreign firms have a positive effect in China. Worker or collective ownership does not have a negative effect. In the post-communist economies new firms are equally or more efficient than firms privatized to domestic owners, and foreign start-ups are more efficient than domestic ones. Privatization is not associated with lower employment. When accompanied by complementary reforms, privatization has a positive effect on economic growth. Three factors appear to drive the more positive effect of privatization to foreign than domestic owners. Domestic managers have more limited skills and access to world markets, domestically privatized firms have been more subject to tunneling and in some countries new large shareholders artificially decreased performance. The important policy implication is that privatization per se does not guarantee improved performance, at least not in the short- to medium-run. Type of private ownership, corporate governance, access to know-how and markets, and the legal and institutional system matter for firm performance.

/pdf/effects-of-privatization-and-ownership-in-transition-4zcpb5izmn.pdf

Effects of Privatization and Ownership in Transition Economies

This paper estimates the effect of privatization on multifactor productivity using comprehensive panel data on initially state‐owned manufacturing firms in four economies. We exploit the data’s longitudinal dimension to control for preprivatization selection and estimate long‐run impacts. The estimates are robust to functional form but sensitive to selection controls. Our preferred random growth estimates imply positive multifactor productivity effects of 15 percent in Romania, 8 percent in Hungary, and 2 percent in Ukraine, but a −3 percent effect in Russia. The foreign privatization effect is larger (18–35 percent) in all countries. Positive domestic effects appear immediately in Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine and continue growing thereafter, but emerge only five years after privatization in Russia.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/64369/1/511046634.pdf

The Productivity Effects of Privatization: Longitudinal Estimates from Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine

Although the development of a new private sector is generally considered crucial to economic transition, there has been little empirical research on the determinants of start‐up firm growth. This article analyzes panel data on 297 new small enterprises in Romania with detailed annual information from the start‐up date through 2001. Controlling for heterogeneity with a rich set of firm characteristics and firm fixed effects, our panel regressions imply that access to external credit substantially increases both employment and sales growth. Entrepreneurial characteristics such as gender and education have weaker estimated effects. Neither technical assistance nor a wide variety of measures of the business environment (contract enforcement, property rights, and corruption) have any clear association with firm growth.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20613/1/dp1343.pdf

What makes small firms grow?: finance, human capital, technical assistance, and the business environment in Romania

We analyze linked databases on all SBA loans and lenders and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Estimation exploits the long panels and variation in local availability of SBA-intensive lenders. The results imply an increase of 3 to 3.5 jobs for each million dollars of loans, suggesting real effects of credit constraints. Estimated impacts are stronger for younger and larger firms and when local credit conditions are weak, but we find no clear evidence of cyclical variation. We estimate taxpayer costs per job created in the range of $21,000 to $25,000.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

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Finance and Growth at the Firm Level: Evidence from SBA Loans

The "big-bang" liberalization of the inefficient Russian economy in 1992 provides a fruitful setting for analyzing the impact of several dimensions of market competition and other factors on enterprise efficiency. We analyze 1992-1998 panel data on 14,961 enterprises covering 75 percent of industrial employment, emphasizing the varied sources, geographic scope, intensity, time path, and survival effects of competitive pressures. We find large, positive effects on TFP from competition in domestic product and local labor markets, and from imports and better transportation infrastructure, although the first effect appears only gradually. Non-state firms outperform state enterprises, even after correction for selection bias.

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Competition and Firm Performance: Lessons from Russia

Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive institutional environment? We explore these questions in a study of privatization in postcommunist Russia. Taking advantage of large regional variation in the size of public administrations, and employing a multilevel research design that controls for pre-privatization selection in the estimation of regional privatization effects, we examine the relationship between state bureaucracy and the impact of privatization on firm productivity. We find that privatization is more effective in regions with relatively large bureaucracies. Our analysis suggests that this effect is driven by the impact of bureaucracy on the post-privatization business environment, with better institutional support and less corruption when bureaucracies are large.

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J. David Brown

Papers

The Productivity Effects of Privatization: Longitudinal Estimates from Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine

What makes small firms grow?: finance, human capital, technical assistance, and the business environment in Romania

Finance and Growth at the Firm Level: Evidence from SBA Loans

Competition and Firm Performance: Lessons from Russia

Helping Hand or Grabbing Hand? State Bureaucracy and Privatization Effectiveness