Person:
Davies, Elwyn

Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions
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Fields of Specialization
Development Economics, Private Sector Development
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Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions
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Last updated: October 23, 2023
Biography
Elwyn Davies is an Economist in the Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Vice Presidency at the World Bank, where he works on firm capabilities, productivity and innovation in a wide range of countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. A Dutch and British national, Elwyn joined the World Bank in 2017 as a Young Professional. Elwyn’s research studies constraints to firm growth and productivity, in particularly the impact of management and incentives as well as the drivers to growth. Before starting at the World Bank, Elwyn worked at the Directorate-General for Trade of the European Commission and was a Lecturer in Economics at the Queens College, University of Oxford. Elwyn holds a BSc and BA from Utrecht University, where he majored in Physics and Economics, and an MPhil and DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Publication Search Results

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  • Publication
    Deconstructing the Missing Middle: Informality and Growth of Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) Abreha, Kaleb Girma; Cirera, Xavier; Maemir, Hibret Belete; Davies, Elwyn
    This paper characterizes the firm size distribution by exploiting establishment-level censuses covering both formal and informal firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper finds a "missing middle" in the employment-based size distribution of firms in four Sub-Saharan African countries. This "missing middle" hinges on the inclusion of informal firms, and it is not explained by state- or foreign-owned firms at the top of the size distribution, nor does it emerge from the size distribution of entrants. The paper reconciles these empirical results with a model of firm dynamics with endogenous informality and shows that calibrated values of entry barriers and productivity-dependent idiosyncratic distortions generate a "missing middle" that is consistent with its underlying drivers in the data.