All books bought on the website can only be read on the app. Download Jackobian to have access to your materials
As recorded widely in the extant literature, foreign-invested firms with superior tech-
nology and managerial skills are likely to generate productivity spillovers that may be
beneficial to local firms. We examine firm level productivity spillovers in the West
African context. Four countries were sampled on the basis that they share institu-
tional and similarities as British colonies and social economic similarities as West Afri-
can countries. The Levinshon and Petrin methodology was fitted with firm level data
sourced from the World Bank enterprise survey for the period 2006–2018 with the
sampled countries having data for different years. Our results confirm that foreign
direct investment has a significant and positive impact on the productivity of firms in
West Africa. Controlling for other effects, Capital intensity has a significant but nega-
tive effect on firm productivity; changes in market concentration do not have any
impact while firm size negatively affects productivity of firms in the region. The study
recommends among other things that policy should be targeted towards removing all
cumbersome access restrictions experienced by foreign investors. Improvement in
the ease of doing business in these countries could be a major policy thrust which will
clear up the path of direct investment inflow.
