FIGURE 3.15 Retail Services Exhibit a Positive Association between Website Use and Labor Productivity Share of retail firms using a website in relation to labor productivity, by country, 2016 90,000 80,000 Value added per worker (US$)
70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0
20
40
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Share of businesses with a website (%) Sources: Calculations based on ILOSTAT, https://ilostat.ilo.org/; United Nations National Accounts, https://unstats.un.org/unsd /snaama/; World Bank Enterprise Surveys. Note: Website data are for most recent available year (2013 onward).
Similarly, in Colombia, computerizing import procedures increased imports and accelerated the growth of firms most exposed to the new procedures. Although the empirical evidence on these impacts is limited, the use of new digital technologies in transportation and logistics services could reduce shipping and customs processing times by an estimated 16–28 percent (World Bank 2020). Efficiency Gains from Scaling Up Based on Increasing Intangible Capital This ability to scale production in a single establishment has been limited among the low-skill services that are less traded because there was typically little value in consolidating many restaurants or retail outlets in the same location. Yet, as described in chapter 2, there is a long history of retail “chains,” especially in the United States, that typically scaled up through multiple establishments across different locations.30 The diffusion of ICT and associated intangible capital such as management practices and branding has further enabled firms in retail and food services, for instance, to replicate the same production process in multiple locations near consumers (Hsieh and Rossi-Handberg 2020). This standardization of production over many establishments is well illustrated by restaurant chains. Gawande (2012) cites the Cheesecake Factory, which has invested in information and communication technologies and
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At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development
