Product innovation and informal market competition in sub-Saharan Africa Firm-level evidence
Product innovation and informal market competition in sub-Saharan Africa Firm-level evidence
复制标题
撒哈拉以南非洲地区的产品创新和非正式市场竞争 公司层面的证据
DOI：
10.1007/s00191-020-00688-2
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发表时间：
2020
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Avenyo E
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Avenyo E
在非洲国家，正规企业和非正规企业之间的互动持续增长。然而，来自非正规企业的竞争仍然是撒哈拉以南非洲正规企业面临的三大障碍之一。本文研究了非正规竞争对正规企业推出的创新产品绩效的影响。我们将世界银行的企业调查与撒哈拉以南非洲五个国家的创新跟踪调查相结合，构建了两项非正规竞争指标，一项针对特定区域（当地），另一项针对特定行业。我们发现，当地的非正规竞争对正规企业的产品创新强度有显着的负面影响，而行业内的非正规竞争则提高了创新销售。然而，规模较大的公司受当地非正式竞争的影响较小，并且实际上从非正式竞争中获得了创新销售的推动。我们认为，当地的非正规竞争会损害产品创新的绩效，但仅限于在非正规经济中缺乏战略协作“立足点”的正规企业。
The interaction between formal and informal businesses continues to grow in African countries. Yet, competition from informal enterprises remains one of the top three obstacles formal businesses face in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates the effect of informal competition on the performance of innovative products introduced by formal firms. We combine the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey with the Innovation Follow-up Survey for five sub-Saharan African countries, and construct two indicators of informal competition, one regional (local)-specific and the other one industry-specific. We find that local informal competition has a robust negative effect on product innovation intensity of formal firms, while within industry informal competition enhances innovative sales. However, larger firms are less affected by local informal competition and actually get a boost in innovative sales from informal competition. We argue that local informal competition harms the performance of product innovation, but only for formal firms that lack strategic collaborative ‘footholds’ in the informal economy.