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Assessing Small Store Performance in Malaysia

June 4, 2020

DECRG Kuala Lumpur Seminar Series

  • There is a large untapped potential to develop retail store services in East-Asian developing countries, as their population living conditions improve rapidly. Using a large sample of small stores in Malaysia, this paper disentangles the factors affecting individual store¡¯s performance, thus attempting to quantify such potential. There are three main results. First, successful stores are rather widely spread across Malaysia; i.e., the richest States do not generally take a higher share of them. Second, the most prominent factors of success across all type of stores is product diversification: the higher the better. Third, as concerns the role of competition (i.e., the number of direct competitors), it is highly sensitive to the kind of store: while it is rather irrelevant overall, it is strongly negative for consumer health stores and for convenience stores, which represent about one third of our sample. In a case study related to the two largest traded specific products for which we have information on product price and location, we find that store competitiveness is correlated with price, distance to competition, and nearby facilities.

  • Filippo di Mauro is Visiting Professor at the Business School (BIZ) of the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he teaches macro and international trade. He is Consultant of the Monetary Authority of Singapore as well as the Economic Development Board of Singapore. Professor di Mauro is Chairperson of  - a large research network on competitiveness and productivity among major international organizations, central banks and academic institutions in Europe - as well as Coordinator of the , based at the NUS-Singapore, specializing on productivity research for the Asia-Pacific region. His present research includes: 1) Productivity and resource reallocation using firm level data; and 2) Modelling global linkages, including global value chains.

    Professor di Mauro has more than 30 years of applied economic experience as economist and research manager in Central Banks (Bank of Italy (1984-1990, 1996-98), US Federal Reserve Board (May-September 2010), European Central Bank (1998-2016)) and International Development organizations (Asian Development Bank (1990-94), IMF (1986-88, 1994-96)). He joined the ECB since the start of its operations in 1998 where he directed for more than a decade the international economic analysis and the global economy forecast in its Economics department to then move to the management of its Research department.

    Professor di Mauro has a wide record of publications, including in academic journals such as the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of International Money and Finance, Economic Policy. An economics graduate of University of Rome, he holds an MA and a PhD in Economics, from the University of Chicago and the American University, respectively.

DETAILS

  • WHEN: Thursday, June 4, 2020; 2:30 - 3:30PM
  • WATCH: Seminar Recording