This paper examines the impact of exchange rate misalignment on total factor productivity growth in case of 15 emerging market economies using the annual data from 1990 to 2014. First, this study through panel cointegration test found a long-run cointegrating relationship between RER misalignment and TFP growth. Second, the DOLS results indicated that RER misalignment has negatively affected the TFP growth in the majority of the countries within the EMEs and the group as a whole too. Third, we found bi-directional panel long-run and short-run Granger causality between real exchange rate misalignment and total factor productivity growth. Finally, in order to check the robustness, the dynamic panel data results showed that RER misalignment has negatively affected the TFP growth, which is consistent with our results derived from the DOLS. Further, when we decomposed the series into pre and post global financial crisis periods, this study found that real exchange rate misalignment did not affect the TFP growth in the pre-global financial crisis, but it has significantly adverse impact on TFP growth after the global financial crisis periods. © 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.