One of the most commonly cited obstacles to firms’ operations in developing economies is inadequate access to electricity. In this paper, we explore the impact of electricity outages on firm productivity using arguably exogenous variation in outages across small and mediumsized Ghanaian manufacturing firms induced by an electricity rationing program. We find that eliminating outages in this setting could lead to a 10 percent increase in firm productivity. We further analyze the strategies firms use to cope with electricity outages. We find that while ∗ Department of Economics, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481. Email: aabebere@wellesley.edu. † ISSER, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. Email: cackah@ug.edu.gh. ‡ University of Ghana Business School, Legon, Accra. Email: poasuming@ug.edu.gh. 1We are grateful to the International Growth Center for generous funding that supported this research project. We are grateful to ISSER for facilitating the firm surveys and to Derek Asuman and Audrey Fok for excellent research assistance. All errors are our own.

中文翻译：

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生产力损失和企业对电力短缺的反应：来自加纳的证据

在发展中经济体中，企业运营最常被提及的障碍之一是电力供应不足。在本文中，我们使用由电力配给计划引起的加纳中小型制造企业的停电外生变化来探讨停电对公司生产率的影响。我们发现，在这种情况下消除中断可以使公司的生产率提高10％。我们进一步分析了企业用于应对电力中断的策略。我们发现，*威尔斯利学院经济系，马萨诸塞州02481。电子邮件：aabebere@wellesley.edu。†ISSER，加纳大学，莱贡，阿克拉。电子邮件：cackah@ug.edu.gh。‡加纳大学商学院，阿克拉，莱贡。电子邮件：poasuming@ug.edu.gh。1我们感谢国际增长中心为该研究项目提供的慷慨资助。我们感谢ISSER协助进行公司调查，并感谢Derek Asuman和Audrey Fok提供了出色的研究帮助。所有错误都是我们自己的。