Measuring Competitiveness and its Sources: The case of Mali's Manufacturing Sector

Cockburn, John; Siggel, Eckhard; Coulibaly, Massa; Vezina, S.

doi:10.1080/02255189.1999.9669852

Cited by 21 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There is evidence across sub-Saharan Africa that rural to urban migration can be a "pull" into productive non-farm jobs: in Ethiopia, successful industrial development led to the substitution of shoes imported from China by locally manufactured leather shoes (Sonobe et al, 2009). With a more favourable industrial environment, Mali could develop its textile industry and become a competitive exporter (Cockburn et al, 1999). More generally, Fine et al (2012) estimated that 122 million young people will get into the labour market in Africa between 2010 and 2020.…”

Section: Pathways Out Of Poverty?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural intensification and policy interventions: Exploring plausible futures for smallholder farmers in Southern Mali

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A B S T R A C TAssessing how livelihoods in rural sub-Saharan Africa might change given future trends in socio-economic and biophysical conditions helps to identify and direct effective efforts towards poverty reduction. Based on existing literature, hypothetical changes in farmer practices and policy interventions were described and used to build five contrasting scenarios towards the year 2027. A simulation framework was developed to assess food selfsufficiency and income per capita now and in the future for a representative village of 99 households in Southern Mali. In the current situation, 26% of the farms were food self-sufficient and above the 1.9 US$ day −1 poverty line. This percentage would fall to 13% in the "Business as usual" scenario. In the "Dairy development" scenario, with intensification of livestock production and support to the milk sector, 27% of farms would be food selfsufficient and non-poor. Additional policy interventions targeting family planning and job creation outside agriculture would be needed to improve both household food self-sufficiency and income per capita. In this optimistic scenario, 77% of the farms would be non-poor and food self-sufficient in 2027. Additional programs to promote Integrated Pest Management, small-scale mechanization and mineral fertilizer on traditional cereals could allow a drastic increase in productivity and would lift 94% of the farm population out of poverty. Considering the entire heterogeneous farm population was crucial to accurately assess pathways out of poverty. Our study stresses the need for a strategic and multi-sectoral combination of interventions to improve livelihoods.http://dx.

show abstract

Section: Pathways Out Of Poverty?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural intensification and policy interventions: Exploring plausible futures for smallholder farmers in Southern Mali

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A healthy and educated workforce is vital to a country's competitiveness and productivity and workers' skills have been found to be statistically significant in the competitiveness of a region's clothing and textile industry (see Woods &Mayer 1998, andBiggs, Miller, Otto &Tyler 1996, among others). Cockburn, Siggel, Coulibaly, and Vezina (1998) argue that the clearest evidence of a firm's international competitiveness is its profitability compared to that of international competitors. They define competitiveness as simply the capacity of firms to sell their products profitably by having a relatively lower unit cost of production than their competitors on the international market.…”

Section: Review Of Definitions Of Competitivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Empirical Analysis of Dynamic Competitiveness in Africa

Sireh-Jallow

2014

AEF

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Specializing in the export of products made intensively from relatively abundant factors of production and in the import of those made from relatively scarce ones has had a lot of traction in international trade practice. Ample evidence, however, now shows that some nations are gaining a comparative advantage in new areas that they never had before. Consequently, the traditional policy option of many African countries of continuing to specialize in areas in which they already have a comparative advantage (such as exports of primary commodities) is complemented with that of moving to new areas (such as high technology manufacturing) in which they could gain some advantage even though they may not enjoy any at the moment. Trade strategies are therefore now being formulated specifically to transition economies from a state of non-competitiveness to a state of relative competitiveness. This transitioning is what we call dynamic competitiveness in this paper. Empirically, we determine this by analysing the growth of the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index of 27 African countries. This is complemented with the analysis of the growth of trade and transport costs using the World Bank Doing Business data. The study finds, among others, that even though the selected Sub-Saharan African countries are improving their (static) competitiveness over time, they cannot be said to be achieving dynamic competitiveness.

show abstract

“…Identification of these factors has been included in a number of theories, ranging from the Adam Smith's theory based on the specialization and division of labour by the neoclassical economists with regard to the investment in the physical capital and infrastructure and, more recently, on the basis of other mechanisms, such as the education and Cockburn et al (1998) point out that a significant impact on the competitiveness of specific companies and industries in the market economy have the level of education, productivity, natural resources (neo-factorial theories), and the business-friendly economic policy. In agriculture, competitiveness is seriously determined by the input prices and by the subsidies (Korom and Sagi 2005).…”

Section: Doi: 1017221/133/2015-agriceconmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural competitiveness: The case of the European Union countries

Nowak¹,

Kamińska²

2016

Agric. Econ. - Czech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Th e paper assesses the competitiveness of agriculture of 27 countries of the European Union in the years [2009][2010][2011]. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon of competitiveness, a wide range of variables was adopted to evaluate it -including the relationship between the production factors, productivity, and the importance of agriculture in the international trade. Based on the evaluation criteria chosen for the competitiveness assessment and using the TOPSIS method, a synthetic measure of the studied phenomenon was constructed and then divided into four groups of countries similar in terms of the level of competitiveness of agriculture. Th e diff erence between the value of the synthetic measure of the country with the highest level of competitiveness of agriculture (Netherlands) and the country least competitive in this regard (Slovenia) was 3.5-fold. In addition to the Netherlands, there were classifi ed also France, Germany, Denmark and Belgium in the fi rst group, so the countries with high levels of the socio-economic development. In the second group, there were seven countries: Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Cyprus, Austria, Ireland and Luxembourg. Th erefore, the fi rst two groups are formed by the countries belonging to the so-called "Old 15" (except Cyprus). Th e last two groups are formed primarily by the countries that joined the European Union in 2004 or later.

show abstract

Measuring Competitiveness and its Sources: The case of Mali's Manufacturing Sector

Cited by 21 publications

References 14 publications

Agricultural intensification and policy interventions: Exploring plausible futures for smallholder farmers in Southern Mali

Agricultural intensification and policy interventions: Exploring plausible futures for smallholder farmers in Southern Mali

An Empirical Analysis of Dynamic Competitiveness in Africa

Agricultural competitiveness: The case of the European Union countries

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About