The life cycle of South African Manufacturing Firms

New source of data is used to describe and better understand the life cycle of South African manufacturing firms

From:
Department for International Development
Published
1 June 2015
Country:
South Africa
Document Type:
Working Paper
Theme:
Economic Growth
Authors:
Kerr, A

Abstract

In this paper the author uses a new source of firm level panel data to describe and better understand the life cycle of South African manufacturing firms.

An important point to emerge from recent firm level work is that there are substantial cross country differences in the size of firms and in the relationship between plant age and size (Hsieh and Klenow, 2014), generated by differences in the importance of selection and within firm growth as well as changes in size of entering cohorts (Sandefur 2010, Davies and Kerr 2015).

These differences may indicate substantial misallocation of resources and low firm level investment in developing countries.

This research was funded under the Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL) Programme

Citation

Kerr, A. The Life Cycle of South African Manufacturing Firms. A DataFirst Technical Paper 33. Cape Town: DataFirst, University of Cape Town. (2015) 17 pp

The life cycle of South African Manufacturing Firms - a working paper

Published 1 June 2015
Contents