Person:
Farole, Thomas C.

Global Practice on Social Protection and Jobs

Fields of Specialization

Trade, Investment, Competitiveness, Economic Geography, Special Economic Zones, Private Sector Development

Departments

Global Practice on Social Protection and Jobs

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Thomas Farole is a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, where he works on the intersection between jobs and productivity, trade, and private sector development. Prior to joining the Jobs Group, he was a senior economist in the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice and country economist for Botswana. His recent articles have appeared in IZA World of Labor, The Journal of Economic Geography, and World Development. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an MSc in Local Economic Development from the LSE, and a BSc in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 35

Foreign Firm Characteristics, Absorptive Capacity and the Institutional Framework

(World Bank, Washingon, DC, 2012-11) Farole, Thomas ; Winkler, Deborah

Using a cross-section of more than 25,000 domestic manufacturing firms in 78 low and middle-income countries from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, this paper assesses how mediating factors influence intra-industry productivity spillovers to domestic firms from foreign direct investment. It identifies three types of mediating factors: (i) foreign direct investment spillover potential, (ii) domestic firm absorptive capacity, and (iii) the host country's institutional framework. It finds that all three affect the extent and direction of foreign direct investment spillovers on domestic firm productivity. However, the impact of mediating factors depends significantly on the level of domestic firms' productivity and the structure of foreign ownership.
Manufacturing Export Competitiveness in Kenya : A Policy Note on Revitalizing and Diversifying Kenya's Manufacturing Sector

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12-04) Farole, Thomas ; Mukim, Megha

This note is a background study to assess policy options to improve competitiveness of Kenya's manufacturing sector, with a specific focus on exports. The focus is on export performance in the manufacturing sector overall and drawing on analysis of four specific manufacturing sectors - apparel, wood furniture, chemicals, and agriculture industries-which are used as examples from which to generalize about wider competitiveness issues in Kenya's manufacturing sector. Kenya's Vision 2030 aspires to achieve middle income status by 2030, which will require sustaining an annual average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10 percent. Restarting the export sector growth engine will be imperative to achieve these targets. In particular, manufacturing exports will be critical because of their impact on growth, employment and economy-wide linkages. Kenya's manufacturing sector exhibits several strengths. Its global share in exports increased over the last 20 years, and it enjoys a strong position with regard to exports to the regional EAC market, particularly in some high value sectors like chemicals and pharmaceuticals. This background note aims to provide the new Government with policy focus and tools to tackle the constraints keeping Kenya from reaching its potential in manufacturing export competitiveness. This note has a specific focus on export performance; it also looks more broadly at the manufacturing sector, including domestic production and sales, where such data is available. As a result, it uses a mix of analytical approaches in the study.
Competitiveness and Connectivity : Integrating Lagging Regions in Global Markets

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Farole, Thomas

In recent decades, as integration of global trade and investment has accelerated, many countries both developing and developed have experienced widening disparities of output and income across regions within their borders. The emergence of entrenched 'leading' and 'lagging' regions is becoming an important policy challenge, particularly in many middle-income countries. This note discusses the role of trade integration in shaping and addressing the challenges of lagging regions.
Integrating Border Regions : Connectivity and Competitiveness in South Asia

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07) Cali, Massimiliano ; Farole, Thomas ; Kunaka, Charles ; Wagle, Swarnim

Deeper regional integration can be beneficial especially for regions along international borders. It can open up new markets on opposite sides of borders and give consumers wider access to cheaper goods. This paper uses data from five contiguous districts of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh in the northeast of the subcontinent to measure the degrees of trade complementarity between districts. The paper illustrates that the regions are underexploiting the potential of intraregional commerce. Price wedges of up to 90 percent in some important consumption products along with measures of complementarity between households' production and consumption suggest the potential for relatively large gains from deeper trade integration. Furthermore, an examination of a specific supply chain of tea highlights factors that help industries scale up, aided by institutions such as an organized auction and decent physical and legal infrastructure. However, districts alike in geography but located across international boundaries face different development prospects, suggesting that gains from reduced "thickness of borders" would not accrue automatically. Much rests on developing intrinsic industry competitiveness at home, including the reform of regulatory and business practices and infrastructural bottlenecks that prevent agglomeration of local economies.
The Role of Imports for Exporter Performance in Peru

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11) Pierola, Martha Denisse ; Fernandes, Ana Margarida ; Farole, Thomas

Using highly disaggregated firm-level customs transaction data for imports and exports in Peru over the 2000–2012 period, this paper explores the relationship between imports of intermediate inputs and firm export performance. The paper shows that greater use, variety, and quality of imported intermediate inputs is significantly correlated with higher exports, faster export growth, greater diversification of export markets, and higher quality exports (as measured by relative unit prices) at the firm level. This relationship is robust and persistent to controls for unobserved firm heterogeneity and year fixed effects. The use of imported inputs is also associated with higher productivity at the firm level. Considering the relationship between specific trade policy measures and the import performance of those exporters that are direct importers, the analysis shows that those exposed to higher tariffs and nontariff measures import less in total and exhibit lower import variety. The use of the advanced clearance procedure as the modality to clear customs for imports is favorable to the import performance of exporter-importers, in that the users of the modality import more and import a more diversified bundle of inputs than those that do not use it, even after controlling for firm size.
Supporting Export Competitiveness through Port and Rail Network Reforms: A Case Study of South Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) Pieterse, Duncan ; Farole, Thomas ; Odendaal, Martin ; Steenkamp, Andre

Transport and logistics infrastructure is a critical determinant of the competitiveness of a country's producers and exporters. Well-functioning transport and logistics infrastructure relies not just on hardware, but critically on the operating environment that emerges from the interaction between private sector operators; national policies and regulatory regimes; and, in many countries, state-owned owners and operators of core infrastructure. This paper looks at the case of South Africa, where constraints in access, pricing, reliability, and network interfaces, particularly in the port and rail network, are eroding the competitiveness of South African exporters. The paper draws on interviews with a wide range of exporters along with secondary research to examine South Africa's port and rail network, and explores the underlying factors contributing to these constraints, including chronic underinvestment, an inadequate regulatory environment, insufficient private sector participation, and weak regional integration. The paper concludes with a review of the reforms needed to deliver a more broadly accessible and competitive rail and port sector based on international case examples. It highlights the need for institutional reforms to promote competitive pricing; private sector participation to increase investment and improve service delivery; information and coordination to address market failures and improve access; and cooperation to improve intermodal, interregional, and institutional interfaces.
Global Value Chain Integration and Productivity: Evidence from Enterprise Surveys in Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-02-26) Winkler, Deborah ; Farole, Thomas

In order to adequately measure a firm’s participation in GVCs in this context, it is important to first identify the different forms through which GVC integration can affect domestic firms’ productivity. Integrating a country’s domestic suppliers into GVCs increases the possibility for productivity gains through exporting to a buyer abroad or supplying to a multinational in the country. But countries should not neglect the opportunities for productivity gains that GVC participation can provide from a buyer’s perspective. Instead of building a complete array of supply chains at home, firms can join existing supply chains of multinationals through cross-border trade in intermediates and components (Taglioni and Winkler 2015). While Farole and Winkler (2014) focus on the productivity spillovers from multinationals in a country, this note looks at the impact of cross-border sales to international buyers (exporting) or purchases of inputs from international sellers (importing) in GVCs. This note is structured as follows. Section two reviews the relevant literature with regard to productivity effects from GVC participation as well as the role of domestic firm characteristics in this context. Section three introduces the data and econometric model. In section four the author presents our regression results, while section five concludes.
Factory Southern Africa?: SACU in Global Value Chains

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) Farole, Thomas

Once concentrated among a few large economies, global flows of goods, services, and capital now reach an ever-larger number of countries worldwide. Global trade in goods and in services both increased 10 times between 1980 and 2011, while foreign direct investment (FDI) flows increased almost 30-fold. A value chain is global when some of these stages are carried out in more than one country, most notably when discrete tasks within a production process are fragmented and dispersed across a number of countries. Southern African Customs Union (SACU) - region global value chains (GVCs) are both a new reality and significant opportunity for expanding non-commodity exports to support growth, diversification, and job creation in the region. The task-based nature of GVCs creates opportunities for developing countries to establish very quickly a position in global trade within a sector in which they may have had no previous experience. For South Africa, GVCs are seen as a route to higher manufacturing exports and greater value addition. For other SACU countries, GVCs are seen as a route to diversification and global integration, and to leverage the possibility of greater investment from South Africa itself. The main objectives of the study are as follows: (i) to understand trends of GVC participation and competitiveness of South Africa and the wider SACU region, the outcomes from this participation (exports, jobs, and productivity), and the factors that determine competitiveness; (ii) to map the extent of value chain integration across the region and identify barriers to deeper integration; and (iii) to identify policies and actions that will be required to develop a globally competitive, high value-adding factory Southern Africa.
A Capability-Based Assessment of GVC Competitiveness for the SACU Region

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-02-20) Pathikonda, Vilas ; Farole, Thomas

The emergence of global value chains (GVCs) and their rapid expansion over the past two decades has transformed the global trade environment. GVCs involve task-based trade across multiple stages of the production process that take place across a number of different countries, in which multiple inputs and exports of intermediate goods and services are necessary to produce a final good, which may also be exported. GVC-oriented trade is seen to offer significant opportunities for developing countries, especially smaller ones, to benefit from global integration by changing the nature of competitiveness. With competition for GVC investment taking place in a truly global market, factor competitiveness relative to other countries matters a lot. In this context, the purpose of this note is to shed some light for policymakers, in this case specifically in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries, on where to focus efforts to drive competitiveness for GVC participation. This is a data-intensive exercise that requires indicators to represent underlying capabilities, disaggregated international trade data, and finally, a classification of which products are likely to be trade within GVCs.
Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit

(World Bank, 2012) Reis, Jose Guilherme ; Farole, Thomas

This Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic (TCD) toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and practical tools needed to conduct an analysis of trade competitiveness. The toolkit can be used to assess the competitiveness of a country's overall basket of exports, as well as specific traded sectors. It includes guidance on a range of tools and indicators that can be used to analyze trade performance in terms of growth, orientation, diversification, quality, and survival, as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the market and supply-side factors that determine competitiveness. The toolkit facilitates the identification of the main constraints to improved trade competitiveness and the policy responses to overcome these constraints. The output of a TCD initiative can be used for a wide variety of purposes. The TCD toolkit is intended for policy makers and practitioners involved in analysis of trade performance and design of trade and industrial policy.