Professor Emanuel Gomes, an Associate Professor at Nova SBE, conducted a study on the corruption in Africa and how it affects the export levels of the most productive companies. Testing the self-selection theory in high corruption environments: evidence from African SMEs is the article that exposes this controversial question that is becoming increasingly more visible.

The main question of the study sticks to whether, in high corruption contexts, invisible barriers may have a detrimental effect on the capacity of African SMEs to compete in international markets. Being that, in such conjunctures the productivity principals and exports are not obvious. In other words, “(…) more productive firms may not (…) [be] more capable of overcoming the barriers to export (…)”.

Read the full study here.