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We investigate the relationship between business practices and enterprise productivity using panel data with matched employer and employee information from Myanmar. The data show that micro, small, and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Myanmar typically adopt only a few modern business practices, and the persistence in the use is extremely low. Even so, we find a positive and economically important association between business practices and productivity. Specifically, the empirical results show that a one standard deviation difference in applied business practices (equivalent to applying an additional 4 to 5 of the 20 business practices in focus) is associated with an 8–10 per cent difference in labour productivity. Utilising the employer–employee information to estimate Mincer-type wage regressions, we find that workers receive about half to two-thirds of the productivity gain in higher wages. Overall, our findings support the notion of business practices as a production technology, and we find that workers and managers split the productivity gains evenly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commitments to curb illegal logging and deforestation have proliferated in recent years with the increase of global trade in tropical timber and wood products. While they reflect international sustainability demands, the employed mechanisms to assure timber legality verification may not reflect conditions faced by local private sector actors. Facing rapid forest loss and limited foreign market access, government of Myanmar started reforming its forest policy to include a system of timber legality verification. Drawing on policy analysis and mixed-methods field research, we evaluate the feasibility of the policy reform to achieve economic and environmental upgrading in the timber value chain. Our findings question the transformative capacity of this policy reform. Not only that it failed to meet its sustainability goals, it has also created favourable conditions for a race to the bottom and concentration in the timber value chain. Economic and environmental upgrading take place at the expense of private smallholders who are expected to address a range of obstacles, including limited access to inputs, quality downgrading, and increased operational costs, which hamper their performance. To prevent socio-environmental losses, forest-sector regulatory reforms should be particularly mindful of these challenges in the midstream segment of the value chain. • Feasibility of policy reform to achieve economic and environmental upgrading. • The case of timber and wood products value chain in Myanmar. • Policy analysis and mixed-methods field research. • The reform failed to meet its sustainability goals. • Conditions for race to the bottom and concentration in the timber value chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique panel survey of enterprises, we examine the relationship between four categories of formalization and firm productivity. We carry out one- and two-step productivity estimations whose robustness we check with matching and doubly robust estimators. The only formalization category that appears to be significantly associated with productivity is tax formalization, i.e. a firm's decision to pay taxes. This positive association only holds for firms that were already more productive and bigger before formalizing than other informal firms. The reason for the insignificance of the remaining three categories is likely to be the insignificant association between formalization and potential benefits of formalization, such as more access to credit, employees, and investments. High taxes and fees linked to formalization seem to outweigh the few to non-existent intermediate benefits of formalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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While Myanmar achieved distinct progress in economic growth and poverty reduction over the past decade, extreme natural events; economic, political, and social crises; and the ongoing COVID‐19 shock pose serious challenges. This study complements previous analyses of poverty and vulnerability by providing a dynamic perspective for the period 2015–2017. Given the lack of longitudinal household data, the analysis relies on the synthetic panels approach to further our understanding of transitions between different states—poverty, vulnerability, non‐poverty—and the characteristics of the households associated with these transitions. Among the main results, we find that there was a relatively high probability for people, who were poor in 2015 to exit poverty in 2017, and that the probability of remaining in a vulnerable situation was non‐negligible. Moreover, the results point to important differences in the probability of transitioning between different states depending on household and location characteristics. While the COVID‐19 shock has likely increased the proportion of households in the vulnerable and poor groups, these results highlight the need to focus on households with specific characteristics that make them more at risk of remaining or falling into poverty than the rest of the population in a context of diminishing poverty rates and localized vulnerability pockets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00419-8 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]