Publication: Structural Transformation and Productivity Growth in Africa: Uganda in the 2000s
Date
2015-12
ISSN
Published
2015-12
Author(s)
Abstract
Uganda’s economy underwent significant
structural change in the 2000s whereby the share of
non-tradable services in aggregate employment rose by about
7 percentage points at the expense of the production of
tradable goods. The process also involved a
12-percentage-point shift in employment away from small and
medium enterprises and larger firms in manufacturing and
commercial agriculture mainly to microenterprises in retail
trade. In addition, the sectoral reallocation of labor on
these two dimensions coincided with significant growth in
aggregate labor productivity. However, in and of itself, the
same reallocation could only have held back, rather than
aid, the observed productivity gains. This was because labor
was more productive throughout the period in the tradable
goods sector than in the non-tradable sector. Moreover, the
effect on aggregate labor productivity of the reallocation
of employment between the two sectors could only have been
reinforced by the impacts on the same of the rise in the
employment share of microenterprises. The effect was also
strengthened by a parallel employment shift across the age
distribution of enterprises that raised sharply the
employment share of established firms at the expense of
younger ones and startups. Not only was labor consistently
less productive in microenterprises than in small and medium
enterprises and larger enterprises across all industries
throughout the period, it was also typically less productive
in more established firms than in younger ones.
Citation
“Ahmed, Sabin; Mengistae, Taye; Yoshino, Yutaka; Zeufack, Albert G.. 2015. Structural Transformation and Productivity Growth in Africa: Uganda in the 2000s. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7504. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23467 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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