As recorded widely in the extant literature, foreign-invested firms with superior technology and managerial skills are likely to generate productivity spillovers that may be beneficial to local firms. We examine firm level productivity spillovers in the West African context. Four countries were sampled on the basis that they share institutional and similarities as British colonies and social economic similarities as West African countries. The Levinshon and Petrin methodology was fitted with firm level data sourced from the World Bank enterprise survey for the period 2006–2018 with the sampled countries having data for different years. Our results confirm that foreign direct investment has a significant and positive impact on the productivity of firms in West Africa. Controlling for other effects, Capital intensity has a significant but negative effect on firm productivity; changes in market concentration do not have any impact while firm size negatively affects productivity of firms in the region. The study recommends among other things that policy should be targeted towards removing all cumbersome access restrictions experienced by foreign investors. Improvement in the ease of doing business in these countries could be a major policy thrust which will clear up the path of direct investment inflow.

中文翻译：

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西非外国直接投资与企业生产力的关系：来自企业层面数据的新实证见解

正如现有文献中广泛记载的那样，拥有卓越技术和管理技能的外商投资企业可能会产生对本地企业有利的生产力溢出效应。我们研究了西非背景下企业层面的生产力溢出效应。四个国家的抽样依据是它们与英国殖民地具有制度和相似性，与西非国家具有社会经济相似性。Levinshon 和 Petrin 方法适用于来自世界银行 2006-2018 年期间企业调查的公司层面数据，样本国家具有不同年份的数据。我们的结果证实，外国直接投资对西非企业的生产率具有重大而积极的影响。控制其他影响，资本密集度对企业生产率有显着但负面的影响；市场集中度的变化没有任何影响，而公司规模对该区域公司的生产率产生负面影响。该研究建议，除其他事项外，政策应旨在消除外国投资者遇到的所有繁琐的准入限制。改善在这些国家开展业务的便利性可能是一项重要的政策推动力，它将扫清直接投资流入的路径。