Research and development and labour productivity: do high-tech firms exhibit labour- or capital-saving technical change?

Employment and output in the advanced technology sectors have generally exhibited above-average growth for more than two decades. While this industry accounts for a relatively small share of total employment, the majority of private sector research and development (R&D) expenditures in the US is concentrated within seven sub-sectors. However, little attention has been paid as to whether high-tech productivity exhibits Hicksian capital or labour ‘savings’ bias or tendency to displace either factor input over time. Biased technical change can occur as economies transition between growth regimes. An augmented production function is employed to analyse the additional impact of R&D activity on firm-level labour productivity. A panel data set comprised of high-tech firms located across the advanced economies, China and India from 1990 to 2013 is used in the analysis. Labour-saving technical change was present across the advanced technology sectors and most countries. The expanded models of labour productivity that used fixed effects with lagged regressors confirmed the prior results as well as finding that R&D per employee, relative R&D intensity and firm market share contribute to firm-level labour productivity growth across countries and sectors. Additional support was found for diminishing returns to scale but not for R&D spillover effects.     

Efficiency change,technological change and capital accumulation in Italian regions: a sectoral study

This paper examines the sources of labour productivity in the Italian regions during the period 1980–2004. Five economic sectors are investigated using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and taking into account productive specialisation and sector inefficiencies. Labour productivity change is decomposed into five components by means of Malmquist productivity indices: intra-sector efficiency change, composition efficiency change, input-biased technical change, magnitude component technical change and capital accumulation. Using bootstrap procedure, the components of labour productivity changes are statistically tested. Efficiency analysis shows that productive specialisation is not a source of inefficiency and efficiency gains can be obtained by sector-specific policies. Thus, it is possible to obtain improvements in efficiency in each sector of activity rather than reallocating resources among sectors. The results of the decomposition by sectors reveal heterogeneous sources of growth. The total economy has shown evidence of non-neutral technical change and, it has been found that agriculture, industry and construction experienced capital using technical change. The analysis of the decomposition of the labour productivity growth is complemented by an analysis of β-convergence.     

Cost structure,technological change,and productivity growth in the greek banking sector

This paper first empirically investigates the cost structure of the Greek banking sector. Secondly, it provides measures of economies (diseconomies) of scale and quantifies technical change and its sources. Finally, this paper measures total factor productivity growth and identifies its sources. Bank production is presented with two different approaches (the intermediation and the production approach) which are used to specify a translog cost function. The two different translog cost models are estimated through the full information maximum likelihood method of estimation on pooled time series and cross sectional data. The results obtained are not significantly affected by model specification. Both models indicate significant economies of scale and negative annual rates of growth in technical change and in total factor productivity.     

Productivity Trends in Australian and New Zealand Manufacturing

The purpose of this article is to study relative trends in total factor productivity (TFP) between the Australian and New Zealand manufacturing sectors from 1986 to 1996. Since 1984 both economies have undergone major structural changes with varying degrees of speed and intensity. We use the Malmquist index to measure TFP growth and decompose it into an efficiency change and a technical change component. This decomposition provides extra insight on assessing relative productivity trends during a period of economic reform. The results indicate the Australian manufacturing sector exhibits better rates of individual factor productivity performance while multifactor productivity is estimated to be higher in New Zealand manufacturing. TFP growth in New Zealand is driven by technical rather than efficiency change. In fact, the New Zealand manufacturing average rate of efficiency change is estimated to be negative over the sample period.     

The Magnitude of the Task Ahead: Macro Implications of Heterogeneous Technology

The empirical growth literature is dominated by accounting and regression methods that assume common production technology across countries. Our empirical model relaxes this assumption and further allows unobservable determinants of output (total factor productivity, TFP) to differ across countries and time, while accounting for endogeneity and cross-section correlation arising from global shocks. Using manufacturing sector data for 48 economies, we show that the assumption of common technology is rejected in our regressions. We illustrate that the erroneous choice of homogeneous technology has a substantial impact on the patterns and magnitudes of the resulting TFP estimates.     

Convergence and growth. Labour productivity dynamics in the European Union

This paper investigates labour productivity dynamics for 1263 regional economies of the European Union during 1991–2007. Despite convergence is usually found to occur conditionally to economy-wide factors, results reveal a clear process of unconditional convergence for financial and business-related market services. Such an evidence is not found for manufacturing and aggregate productivity, for which long run distribution dynamics are characterized by bimodality. The decomposition of the growth rate of aggregate labour productivity reveals that pure productivity gains drive growth. Structural change plays a minor role in the process, however it halves the contribution of the manufacturing sector for the richest regions, while it enhances the weight of financial market services.     

Productivity growth from an international trade perspective

This paper presents a framework to assess the relative importance of three key sources of productivity growth that international trade research focuses on: (1) inter‐industry specialization; (2) intra‐industry reallocation of resources across heterogeneous firms; and (3) technological progress. We illustrate how to apply the framework by deciphering the productivity dynamics of the Swiss manufacturing industry. We find that intra‐industry reallocations are the most important source of growth in aggregate total factor productivity, spurred by the productivity growth of large, incumbent firms and the entry of new firms. Inter‐industry specialization and general technological progress, nevertheless, remain important supplementary sources of productivity growth.     

总需求、国际贸易与我国省际生产率变化——基于省际面板数据的研究

全要素生产率的提高是促进经济持续增长的重要原因,对生产率的研究,主要是从供给方面展开的,本文试图从需求角度研究全要素生产率变动的原因。理论上看,总需求通过影响技术创新、技术选择、规模经济效益和要素的使用效率等途径引起生产率的变化,国际贸易则通过促进分工深化、产生技术溢出等促进生产率的提高。然后,本文采用数据包络分析方法测算了中国省际全要素生产率变化,并将其分解为技术效率的变化和技术进步。结果发现中国改革开放以来全要素生产率增长主要是技术进步的结果,技术效率的作用很小。在测算和分解的基础上,利用省际面板数据,就总需求和国际贸易对生产率增长的影响作了实证分析,发现最终消费和资本形成对技术进步和全要素生产率的提高作用显著,出口对生产率增长的作用不显著,进口显著地促进了省际全要素生产率增长和技术进步。     

International Outsourcing, Technological Change, and Wage Inequality

This paper analyzes the impact of international outsourcing on UK wage inequality during the 1990s by applying the mandated wage approach proposed by Feenstra and Hanson (1999 ). The methodology is extended in order to obtain additional insight into the relative importance of the factor and sector bias of international outsourcing and technological change. The results indicate that technological change is the predominant force behind the increase in wage inequality, but international outsourcing also contributed significantly. In explaining the increase in wage inequality the factor bias of technological change was slightly larger than its sector bias, while for international outsourcing the sector bias was much more important. The relative importance of the two effects hinges crucially on the estimated rate of productivity passthrough.     

ICT spillovers and productivity in Canada: provincial and industry analysis

Research on the effect of information and communication technology (ICT) on productivity in developed countries is already extensive, but the spillover and time-varying effects of ICT investment across economic activities have been only minimally explored. This paper investigates the impacts of ICT and its spillovers on productivity in Canada, focusing on heterogeneity across provinces and industries over time. The panel data estimation model includes 10 provinces with diverse economic activities for the period 1990–2008, and the two-digit level industries for the period 1981–2008. The findings show that ICT has a positive impact on labour productivity, but the effects vary significantly across provinces, industries, and time. Specifically, while provinces with higher shares of manufacturing and services in their GDP have reaped the benefits of ICT investment, other provinces primarily dependent on natural resources and agriculture are lagging behind. The industry-level analysis also reveals that manufacturing and services industries have benefited from ICT investment much more than primary sector industries. The results further indicate that ICT investment in the USA, a major trading partner, has spilled over to some Canadian provinces and industries and that the overall ICT effects are stabilized in those ICT-intensive provinces and industries.     

我国经济增长的多重均衡现象——基于动态门槛面板数据模型的研究

本文首次应用动态门槛面板数据模型，对我国经济增长的多重均衡现象进行了研究，研究表明我国经济增长具有明显的多重均衡现象。当人均收入低于1007元时，存在着经济增长障碍，经济处于低水平陷阱；一旦突破低收入门槛，在同一的收入状态里省区经济增长率趋向收敛。然而，由于较高收入状态的省区收入收敛速度快于较低收入状态的省区，因此，我国富裕省区与相对落后省区的人均收入差距还在不断扩大；我国目前还没有达到增长极限，不存在高水平陷阱现象。     

China's regional income disparityAn alternative way to think of the sources and causes1

Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978–2005, we decomposed the causes and factors that have contributed to inter‐regional per capita income disparity. Variance in capital per employee and variance in capital elasticity are found to be the two main sources of income disparity while the employment–labour force ratio is shown to be an important factor in containing the rise of income disparity. An analysis on inter‐regional factor reallocation effects reveals their relatively small and insignificant contributions to overall growth performance. It is also discovered that capital has in most years flowed in the right direction to pursue higher marginal productivity across provincial economies. Inter‐provincial labour movement, on the other hand, had not displayed significant equilibrating effects until institutional reforms started to allow freer inter‐regional labour mobility in later years. Generally, we conclude that market‐oriented factor mobility has played a crucial role in equalizing factor returns as well as enhancing growth efficiency across regions.     

Sources of output growth in Singapore's services sector

As services are an important engine of growth for Singapore, this paper attempts to empirically investigate the sources of output growth in this sector to shed light on the debate sparked off by Krugman (1994) on the miraculous or mythical growth of Singapore and the other newly industralizing Southeast Asian economies. This is done by using the stochastic production frontier model with panel data. Unlike existing studies which used the conventional growth accounting approach to decompose output growth into just input growth and total factor productivity (TFP) growth, this approach further decomposes TFP growth into technological progress and changes in technical efficiency.     

信用对服务业增长的影响：理论探讨与经验研究

本文首先通过超边际分析对信用促进服务业发展的机制进行形式化证明,然后利用包括32个OECD经济体与90个非OECD经济体在内的共122个国家或地区1997-2011年的数据,运用静态面板固定效应模型和动态面板FD-GMM估计方法,并按照全部样本、OECD样本与非OECD样本的类型进行经验研究,最后审查了研究结论在中国的适用性。结果发现：静态面板模型下,信用水平与服务业增长率显著正相关,这一结论对全部样本、OECD样本、非OECD样本都成立;动态面板模型下,信用对服务业增长的促进作用在全部样本与非OECD样本中仍显著,但是在OECD样本中不显著;信用推动服务业增长的边际生产力随着信用存量的增加而递减;信用是推动我国服务业增长的重要因素,且其边际生产力较高。     

International Technology Diffusion and the Growth of TFP in the Manufacturing Sector of Developing Economies

This paper evaluates various channels through which foreign technology diffuses to the manufacturing sector of developing economies. These economies undertake virtually no own R&D, so they rely on foreign technology to a much larger extent than developed economies. We investigate the direct effect of foreign R&D, as well as technology embodied in imports of intermediate and capital goods and foreign direct investment, on the growth of total factor productivity and value added in the manufacturing sector of 32 economies during 1965–92. We find that foreign R&D typically has the biggest positive impact on domestic productivity and value‐added growth. Imports of capital goods and foreign direct investment also play a similar role, but their effect is of smaller magnitude and is not always significant.     

What determines productivity performance of telecommunications services industry? A cross-country analysis

This article investigates the key factors that determine the productivity performance of telecommunications services industry. A simple theoretical model is used to illustrate that the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth is attributable to the effects of scale economies, market competition and technical change. We then examine empirically the effect of various factors on the TFP growth in the industry using panel data in 12 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for the period 1983 through 2003. The empirical results are consistent with the theoretical prediction. A new finding in this article is that higher machinery and equipment (M&E) capital intensity and human capital contribute to higher TFP growth in the telecommunications services industry. The decomposition analysis also suggests that technical change induced by changes in M&E capital intensity and human capital are important sources of productivity performance in the industry across the OECD countries, contributing to about 20–50% and 2–7% of TFP growth, respectively. These findings highlight the importance of improving the conditions for M&E capital investment and the quality of human capital, which in turn could facilitate the adoption of new technologies and enhance the productivity in the industry.     

Structure and performance of the service sector in transition economies1

This paper examines the performance of the service sector in the Eastern European transition economies during the 1997–2004 period. The performance of the service sector as a whole and of its sub‐sectors is very heterogeneous within the region. Service sub‐sectors that are information and communications technology producers or users and those using skilled labour more intensively exhibit the highest labour productivity growth. Our estimates show a positive and significant effect of liberalization on service labour productivity growth that is stronger for sub‐sectors that are more distant from the technological frontier. Service liberalization is also shown to have a positive effect on labour productivity levels and growth of downstream manufacturing industries.     

可标准化服务行业对服务业发展的影响——基于两部门模型的分析

从理论上探讨了标准化促进服务业发展的内在机制。构建了两部门模型,分析了可标准化服务部门对服务业发展的影响。利用2003—2012年中国服务业的省际数据,运用面板模型对可标准化服务部门的溢出效应进行了估算,利用DEA方法对服务业各行业的全要素生产率进行了测算和分解。结果表明:可标准化服务部门要素的边际产出高于不可标准化服务部门,发展可标准化服务部门有利于服务业增长;可标准化服务行业对不可标准化服务行业的溢出效应为负,原因在于可标准化服务行业的全要素生产率较低,因此在当前发展阶段需要进一步对可标准化服务行业内部进行优化整合。     

中国商业银行业的全要素 生产率增长及其分解——基于24家银行面板数据的实证分析

本文收集了2003-2010年24家商业银行的非平衡面板数据,首先通过构建随机前沿生产模型,对中国银行业的技术效率进行测算,然后利用TFP分解模型对商业银行TFP增长的驱动因素及其演变过程进行了系统分析。研究发现,整体来说,中国银行业的全要素生产率在所有年份均实现了明显的增长。相对而言,国有大型商业银行在研究初期并没有显示出明显的优势,但随着时间的推移,其TFP增长率开始不断上升,并逐渐赶超中小型银行。通过对TFP增长率的分解计算,技术效率变化和要素配置效率变化对中国银行业TFP增长具有较强的拉动作用,技术进步的影响并不明显,而规模效率变化的负面作用最为显著。     

A quantitative explanation of the low productivity in South–Eastern European economies: the role of misallocations

It is well known that southeast Europe is the least developed area in Europe. Using a methodology based on the idea of heterogeneous firms, this paper studies the degree to which firm heterogeneity and resource misallocation can explain the lower TFP in southeast Europe. The results show a significant degree of heterogeneity and resource misallocation, although the results are sensitive to the calibration used. There is evidence that firm-level productivity depends on firm size, while taxation negatively influences it. There is also some evidence that foreign-owned firms are more competitive, as are exporting firms. Results are generally robust across the various specifications used, but less so relative to the measure of productivity used. Additional evidence suggests that infrastructure-related obstacles as well as institutional instability drive the output distortion, while no factor is underlined as a significant driver of capital distortions, suggesting the need for better data sources for the latter.