Dutz, Mark Andrew

Person:
Dutz, Mark Andrew

Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Industrial organization economics, Productivity

Departments

Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice, The World Bank

Last updated: March 13, 2023

Biography

Mark Dutz is Lead Economist in the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice of the World Bank Group. He is responsible for work on productivity growth and its interaction with poverty reduction and shared prosperity. He is co-editor of Making Innovation Policy Work: Learning from Experimentation (2014) and Promoting Inclusive Growth: Challenges and Policies (2012), and lead author of The Jobs of Tomorrow: Technology, Productivity and Prosperity in Latin America and the Caribbean (2018), and Unleashing India’s Innovation: Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (2007). Dr. Dutz has taught at Princeton University and has published articles in journals and monographs in applied microeconomics, including on competition, innovation, productivity and international trade issues, and their linkages with growth and inclusion. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a Masters’ in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 27

Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
Digital Technology Uses among Microenterprises: Why Is Productive Use So Low across Sub-Saharan Africa?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-01-24) Atiyas, Izak; Dutz, Mark A.
This paper explores the use of digital technologies, their association with performance outcomes, and the main constraints to greater use among microenterprises. The study uses a sample of more than 3,300 firms across seven Sub-Saharan African countries, of which over 70 percent are informal and over half are self-employed enterprises with no full-time workers. The analysis finds that productive use of digital technologies is low: less than 7 percent of firms use a smartphone, less than 6 percent use a computer, and roughly 20 percent still do not use a mobile phone. Even fewer firms use digital tools enabled by these access technologies: among firms with smartphones, less than half use the internet to find suppliers, and only half with a computer use accounting software or inventory control/point-of-sale software. Women are less likely to use all digital technologies than men. A greater range of uses based on internet-enabled computers or smartphones relative to uses based on 2G phones are conditionally associated with higher job levels. However, there may be a tension between higher productivity and more jobs: the highest productivity firms are not generators of the highest jobs, and vice versa. That formal high-sales and high-jobs firms are more strongly associated with the use of internet-enabled tools than high-productivity firms suggests that relaxing constraints preventing the latter from using more such digital tools and expanding sales and jobs could be important. Among these constraints, more than seven in ten non-users indicate that lack of attractiveness (“no need”) is the main impediment to productive use of digital technologies. The most important conditional correlates of smartphone and computer adoption are related to having a loan, having electricity, having business linkages with large firms as customers, and managers having vocational training.
Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth: Technological Transformation for Better and More Jobs
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-03) Cruz, Marcio; Dutz, Mark A.; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth explores possible solutions for a more intensive use of digital technologies, especially by small and medium enterprises, to increase their productivity and create more quality jobs. The report will contribute to helping women and young people in particular to gain access to decent work and therefore reduce their exposure to poverty. Appropriate use of this report will make it possible to succeed in the challenges of digital transformation, especially in the context of a relatively young population that is more open to innovation and change.
The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-06-21) Choi, Jieun; Dutz, Mark; Usman, Zainab; Choi, Jieun; Dutz, Mark; Usman, Zainab
The Future of Work in Africa focuses on the key themes of creating productive jobs and addressing the needs of those left behind. It highlights how global trends, especially the adoption of digital technologies, may change the nature of work in Sub-Saharan Africa by creating new opportunities and challenges. It argues that, contrary to global fears of worker displacement by new technologies, African countries can develop an inclusive future of work, with opportunities for lower-skilled workers. Harnessing these opportunities is, however, contingent on implementing policies and making productive investments in four main areas. These are enabling inclusive digital technologies; building human capital for a young, rapidly growing, and largely low-skilled labor force; increasing the productivity of informal workers and enterprises; and extending social protection coverage to mitigate the risks associated with disruptions to labor markets. This companion report to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2019 concludes with important policy questions that should guide future research, whose findings could lead to more inclusive growth for African nations.
Informal Microenterprises in Senegal: Performance Outcomes and Possible Avenues to Boost Productivity and Jobs
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06) Atiyas, İzak; Dutz, Mark A.
This paper explores differences and similarities across formal and informal microenterprises in Senegal. It uses a new national sample of more than 500 firms, of which two-thirds are informal and over 95 percent are micro-size, employing five or fewer full-time employees. The analysis finds that formal firms have average performance outcomes that are in the range of three to five times higher than informal firms. Formal firms are also more likely than informal firms on average to possess “good” characteristics, namely assets and uses of digital technologies that are positively correlated with productivity, sales, exporting, and employment. Despite these average differences, informal firms are highly heterogeneous, with a sizable number similar to formal firms in terms of both performance outcomes and good characteristics: the share of informal firms in the top productivity and sales deciles having good characteristics is substantial, and one-third of all firms in the high-performance cluster based on a data-driven combination of the four performance variables are informal firms. Importantly, several characteristics that are correlates of better performance (being in the top two clusters) for informal firms are identical to those for all firms in the high-performance cluster: having electricity, having had a loan, and in terms of uses of digital technologies, having a smartphone and using a mobile phone to communicate with suppliers and customers. However, a sizable number of high-performance informal firms are lagging in terms of good characteristics. That roughly half of formal firms and no informal firm had a loan implies that it is possible to be in the top performance cluster even without having access to such formal financing. That over half of formal firms in the top cluster as well as in the top decile of productivity and sales use inventory control/point of sales software as a management tool while only one informal firm does is both indicative of the small number of informal firms that use these technologies and suggestive of the potential for performance improvements if such technologies were used more widely.
Digital Technology Uses among Informal Micro-Sized Firms: Productivity and Jobs Outcomes in Senegal
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03) Atiyas, İzak; Dutz, Mark A.
This paper explores the use of digital technologies among informal micro-sized firms in Senegal, their association with productivity, sales, exports and jobs, and the role of age and gender dimensions of enterprise owners. The study uses a new national sample of over 500 firms, of which over 90 percent are not fully formal and over 95 percent are micro-sized, employing five or fewer full-time employees. The analysis finds that using a 2G mobile phone is significantly positively correlated both with productivity and sales, and using a smartphone is associated with an additional premium relative to using a 2G. The largest statistically significant conditional correlate of productivity, sales and jobs is a more specialized internal-to-the-firm management technology proxying for management capabilities more generally, namely inventory control/point of sales (POS) software. Use of digital technologies to facilitate external-to-the-firm transactions, namely using mobile money to pay suppliers and to receive payments from customers are also statistically significant conditional correlates of productivity and sales. Using a smartphone is also positively correlated with exporting (while using only a 2G phone is not). Finally, there are significant digital divides in the use of digital technologies across age and gender groupings.
Jobs and Growth: Brazil's Productivity Agenda
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-06-22) Dutz, Mark A.
Brazil approaches its 2018 election with an economy that is gradually recovering from the deepest recession in its recent economic history. However, for many Brazilians, the recovery has not yet translated into new and better jobs, or rising incomes. This book explores the drivers of future employment and income growth. Its key finding: Brazil needs to dramatically improve its performance across all industries in terms of productivity if the country is to provide better jobs for its citizens and generate lasting gains in incomes growth for all. This is particularly important as Brazil is aging rapidly and the boost the country has enjoyed thanks to its young and growing labor force in the past decades will disappear in just a few years’ time. The book recommends a change in the relationship between the state and business, from rewarding privileged incumbents to fostering competition and innovation—together with supporting workers and firms to adjust to the demands of the market. The book is addressed to all scholars and students of Brazil’s economy, especially those interested in why the country’s economic performance has not kept up with earlier achievements since the reintroduction of democracy in the mid-1980s. Its conclusions are urgent and pertinent but also optimistic. With the right policy mix, Brazil could enter the third century of its independence in 2022 well on track to join the ranks of high income countries.
The Jobs of Tomorrow: Technology, Productivity, and Prosperity in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-04-10) Packard, Truman G.; Dutz, Mark A.; Almeida, Rita K.
While adoption of new technologies is understood to enhance long-term growth and average per-capita incomes, its impact on lower-skilled workers is more complex and merits clarification. Concerns abound that advanced technologies developed in high-income countries would inexorably lead to job losses of lower-skilled, less well-off workers and exacerbate inequality. Conversely, there are countervailing concerns that policies intended to protect jobs from technology advancement would themselves stultify progress and depress productivity. This book squarely addresses both sets of concerns with new research showing that adoption of digital technologies offers a pathway to more inclusive growth by increasing adopting firms’ outputs, with the jobs-enhancing impact of technology adoption assisted by growth-enhancing policies that foster sizable output expansion. The research reported here demonstrates with economic theory and data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico that lower-skilled workers can benefit from adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies biased towards skilled workers, and often do. The inclusive jobs outcomes arise when the effects of increased productivity and expanding output overcome the substitution of workers for technology. While the substitution effect replaces some lower-skilled workers with new technology and more highly-skilled labor, the output effect can lead to an increase in the total number of jobs for less-skilled workers. Critically, output can increase sufficiently to increase jobs across all tasks and skill types within adopting firms, including jobs for lower-skilled workers, as long as lower-skilled task content remains complementary to new technologies and related occupations are not completely automated and replaced by machines. It is this channel for inclusive growth that underlies the power of pro-competitive enabling policies and institutions—such as regulations encouraging firms to compete and policies supporting the development of skills that technology augments rather than replaces—to ensure that the positive impact of technology adoption on productivity and lower-skilled workers is realized.
Can Business Input Improve the Effectiveness of Worker Training?: Evidence from Brazil's Pronatec-MDIC
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-07) O'Connell, Stephen D.; Mation, Lucas Ferreira; Bevilaqua T. Basto, Joao; Dutz, Mark A.
This study evaluates the employment effects of a publicly-run national technical vocational education training program in Brazil that explicitly takes input from firms in determining the location, scale, and skill content of courses offered. Using exogenous course capacity restrictions, the study finds that those completing the course following receipt of a course offer have an 8.6 percent increase in employment over the year following course completion. These effects come from previously unemployed trainees who find employment at non-requesting firms. The demand-driven program's effects are larger and statistically distinguishable from those of a broader and institutionally-similar publicly-administered skills training program run at the same time that did not take input from firms. The study finds that the demand-driven program better aligned skill training with future aggregate occupational employment growth -- suggesting the input from firms captured meaningful information about growth in skill demand. Courses offered in occupations that grew more over the year following requests exhibited larger employment effects, explaining the effectiveness of the demand-driven model.
Business Support Policies: Large Spending, Little Impact
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-11) Dutz, Mark
The focus of this paper is on policies that ought to support productivity, output and employment growth. This support can be direct and indirect, targeted to specific sectors or types of firms or wide ranging. The presence of externalities is the main theoretical justification for deviating from policy neutrality if enhancing economic efficiency is the policy objective. Policies seeking to correct efficiency-related market failures could, for instance, support local within-sector Marshallian externalities or intra-sector spillovers, collective action to overcome sector-specific coordination failures, and the promotion of information spillovers associated with self-discovery and product diversification, based on static or dynamic knowledge, learning or other positive externalities (Harrison and Rodriguez-Clare, 2010). The presence of market failures is only a necessary and not sufficient rationale for government intervention. It is also important to ensure that the benefits to the economy from any intervention outweigh the associated costs including the costs of any government failures in the design and implementation of the intervention - linked among others to imperfect information by government of productivity-related firm needs, government capture and the creation of rents as well as outright corruption (Hevia et al., 2017).