- _Generator use:_ The alternative response to the absence of public electricity often sought by businesses is the use of generators. Therefore, at the firm level, self-generation may explain why some firms experience power outages and others do not. To capture this effect, we include a dummy variable in the covariates that takes 1 if the firm uses a generator, and 0 otherwise.

# **6.** **<u>Country-level covariates</u>**

- _Country-level variables:_ We control for the effect of several macroeconomic variables. These variables first serve as covariates, making treated and untreated companies comparable. Then they are introduced in the second stage to study their effect on dependent variables. These variables come from the World Bank and WDI databases: GDP per capita **(t-1)** , GDP growth **(t-1)** , electricity losses during transmission and transport **(t-1)** , and the rule of law growth **(t-1)** .

- 3.3. Statistics

Table 1 summarizes statistics for the variables described above. Regarding dependent variables, it appears that the bulk of SSA manufacturing firms’ sales is made on domestic markets. Overall, 90% of manufacturing company sales are within the domestic economy, with the remaining 10% being exported. This highlights the poor export performance of SSA manufacturing firms. In the case of the main variable of interest, only 19% of manufacturing companies declare not experiencing power outages, revealing the poor access to electricity by this group of firms in SSA. On average, the companies considered are 17 years old, the average status being a shareholding company with non-traded shares or shares traded privately, and only 12% of managers are women. The SSA manufacturing sector employed, on average 78 people and sold thirteen billion one hundred million products three years ago (US $). Most of the manufacturing firms in SSA consider access to transport a moderate obstacle. For firm-level covariates, we have: 54%, 31% and 15% of companies that are small-sized, medium- and large-sized firms, respectively; around half of them are generator users. Power losses during transmission and transport (electricity grid quality), accounts for around 17% of electricity production. The mean of GDP per capita and that of GDP growth in the sample are $1,693 and 5.58%, respectively. On average, the growth rate of the rule of law is negative (-3.59%) showing an average deterioration of institutional quality in our sample.

**Table 1: Variables**

|**Variable**|**Obs**|**Mean**|**Std. dev.**|**Min**|**Max**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**_Dependent variables_**||||||
|Exports % total sales|12,812|9.70|24.07|0|100|
|Domestic sales % total sales|12,812|90.30|24.07|0|100|
|**_Variables of interest_**||||||
|Firms having access to electricity||||||
|(dummy, 0-1)|12,909|0.19|0.40|0|1|
|**_Control variables_**||||||
|Firms' age (years)|13,025|16.78|14.15|0|90|
|Firms' status (qualitative variable, 1-5)|13,025|2.11|1.37|1|5|
|Gender (M=1, F=0)|7,860|0.12|0.32|0|1|
|Labor 3 years ago (number of workers)|11,685|77.69|1590.714|0|170000|
|Output 3 year ago (US$)|9,694|1.33E+10|1.30E+12|0|1.28E+14|
|Transport (qualitative variable, 1-5)|12,908|1.47|1.27|0|4.00|

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