High-growth entrepreneurial firms in Africa: a quantile regression approach |
| |
Authors: | Micheline Goedhuys Leo Sleuwaegen |
| |
Institution: | (1) UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands;(2) Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium |
| |
Abstract: | This article analyses the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of 11 Sub-Saharan
African countries. The focus of the article is on identifying those entrepreneurs’ attributes and firm characteristics that
tend to generate a significant number of high-growth firms in these countries. To this end, we use a quantile regression,
which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes. The results
indicate that firms that engage in product innovation, have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through
their own website are especially characterized by higher growth rates and also display a distribution of growth rates skewed
to the right, hosting a higher number of high-growth firms. The effect of the last two variables, which relate to distance-bridging
modes of infrastructure, points to the self-reinforcing growth effects they generate in creating wider input and output markets.
Education raises growth opportunities by affecting the lower quantiles, but it does not appear to influence the upper quantiles.
The estimated conditional growth distributions for the technology-intensive machinery and electronics sectors show more extreme
tails and a lower mean in comparison to the traditional industries, indicating the more risky nature of doing business in
these industries. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|