May 2001 - Labor costs in Francophone Africa are considered high by the standards of low-income countries, at least in the formal sector. Workers appear to have some bargaining power and, in Côte d'Ivoire, can force renegotiation of labor contracts in response to new investments. Labor costs in...

This paper uses firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to estimate the effect of exporting on efficiency. Estimating simultaneously a production function and an export regression that control for unobserved firm effects, it finds both significant efficiency...