Does Public Sector Inefficiency Constrain Firm Productivity : Evidence from Italian Provinces /

This paper studies the effect of public sector efficiency on firm productivity using data from more than 400,000 firms across Italy's provinces. Exploiting the large heterogeneity in the efficiency of the public sector across Italian provinces and the intrinsic variation in the dependence of in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Giordano, Raffaela
Other Authors: Lanau, Sergi, Tommasino, Pietro, Topalova, Petia
Format: Journal
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2015.
Series:IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2015/168
Online Access:Full text available on IMF
Description
Summary:This paper studies the effect of public sector efficiency on firm productivity using data from more than 400,000 firms across Italy's provinces. Exploiting the large heterogeneity in the efficiency of the public sector across Italian provinces and the intrinsic variation in the dependence of industries on the government, we find that public sector inefficiency significantly reduces the labor productivity of private sector firms. The results suggest that raising public sector efficiency could yield large economic benefits: if the efficiency in all provinces reached the frontier, output per employee for the average firm would increase by 9 percent.
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Physical Description:1 online resource (26 pages)
Format:Mode of access: Internet
ISSN:1018-5941
Access:Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students