Publication: Understanding the Business Environment in South Asia : Evidence from Firm-Level Surveys
Date
2012-08
ISSN
Published
2012-08
Author(s)
Carlin, Wendy
Schaffer, Mark
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship
between firm performance and growth and the business
environment in the countries of the South Asia Region --
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka -- using firm-level data from the
World Bank's Enterprise Surveys. The analysis uses an
approach in which the responses of firms to questions about
the quality of the business environment can be interpreted
as shadow prices: estimations by managers of the cost
imposed on the firm by inadequacies of an aspect of the
business environment -- public inputs such as regulation,
physical infrastructure, availability of skilled labor,
macroeconomic conditions, rule of law, etc. -- for the
growth of their firm. The analysis finds, in line with this
approach, that higher-productivity and better-performing
firms in the region, and in particular firms that recently
expanded their employment and created jobs, report
significantly higher constraints in terms of the supply of
public inputs. The authors discuss the differences across
countries in the importance of various industries, how they
relate to various firm characteristics, how informal and
rural sector firms are constrained by public inputs, and how
firms in the South Asia Region countries compare with firms
in the rest of the world.
Citation
“Carlin, Wendy; Schaffer, Mark. 2012. Understanding the Business Environment in South Asia : Evidence from Firm-Level Surveys. Policy Research working paper;no. 6160. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/ed5c9652-9703-51e3-9333-6f4770295c88 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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