Productivity effects on Mexican manufacturing employment

We examine the effects of labor productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) on employment across 25 Mexican manufacturing industries from 1984 to 2000. Employing panel data methods, several interesting findings emerge. First, we observe a strong and positive impact of NAFTA on employment. Second, productivity exerts a procyclical, positive effect on employment but this effect becomes smaller after NAFTA. Third, partitions of our sample according to capital-labor intensity suggest that industries which are less capital-intensive were affected negatively on impact by NAFTA but that productivity impacted employment positively after NAFTA. In contrast, more capital-intensive industries display these results in reverse.     

Labour productivity and employment in Australian manufacturing SMEs

This paper examines the relationship between labour productivity and employment in Australian manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The results indicate that labour productivity of SMEs varies substantially between industries within the manufacturing sector, but on average labour productivity for manufacturing SMEs increased at a faster rate than that of large manufacturing enterprises across all industries. All manufacturing industries except one recorded employment growth during the period under study. However like labour productivity growth, employment growth also varies across industries within the manufacturing sector. Yet the study could not establish any definite relationship between labour productivity growth and employment. This finding is consistent with some previous studies.     

Intra-urban location of manufacturing employment in Colombia

This paper describes the spatial distribution of manufacturing employment in Bogota and analyzes the changes in the location patterns over the 1970–1975 period using industrial directory data. The analysis shows strong evidence of the spatial decentralization of manufacturing employment owing to a steady movement of firms outward from central areas; new large firms with more than 100 employees tend to locate near the periphery while the births of small firms tend to take place near the center. Measures of concentration indicate an increasing dispersion of manufacturing establishments during the period.     

The distribution of changes in manufacturing employment and the impact of the minimum wage

That employment for workers in durable goods industries is more sensitive to the pace of economic activity than for non-durable goods employees is not a surprising result. What is noteworthy about the conclusions of this study, however, is the manner in which increases in the minimum wage have altered the distribution of employment and sensitivity to short-run changes in employment of production workers in manufacturing industries. By focusing on the distribution of employment and how that distribution changes over the cycle, estimates of some aspects of the impact of the minimum wage that have not previously been analyzed have been developed.The evidence indicates that increases in the minimum wage over the period 1947–1975 have had a significant impact on employment patterns. Minimum wage legislation has had the effect of decreasing the share of projected employment and increasing vulnerability to cyclical changes in employment for the group of workers most ‘marginal’ to the work force low-wage industry employees. Hence, as a result of increased minimum wages, low-wage industry employees are able to obtain fewer jobs during periods of normal employment growth and their jobs are less secure in the face of short-run employment variations.Minimum wage legislation has undoubtedly resulted in higher wages for some of the relatively-low-productivity workers who were able to obtain employment than these workers would have received in its absence. The cost in terms of lost employment opportunities and cyclical vulnerability of jobs, however, has apparently been borne most heavily by low-wage industry employees. The primary beneficiaries of the shifts in the pattern of employment shares occasioned by minimum wage increases were high-wage industry workers, particularly in the ordnance, food, tobacco, and petroleum industries.     

Size of employment unit and injury rates in British manufacturing: a secondary analysis of WIRS 1990 data

This article uses unique information provided by the WIRS 1990 dataset in order to explore the relation between size and industrial injury in British manufacturing industry. Results are reported for both independent establishments and for those which form part of larger organisations. The examination of the relation between the injury rate and other variables is permitted by use of a regression model.     

Cournot vs. Walras: A reappraisal through simulations

Best-reply behavior in Cournot oligopolies generally leads to Cournot-Nash equilibrium, but imitative behavior selects the Walrasian equilibrium as the unique stochastically stable state. Previous work (Alós-Ferrer, 2004) showed that in the presence of memory, imitative behavior leads to a non-trivial dynamics selecting all quantities between the Cournot and Walrasian outcomes. However, the scope of previous results was limited to specific assumptions on demand and cost functions, and did not provide information on the shape of the distribution of outcomes. We use computational simulations to address these limitations. We show that the selection result for non-trivial memory holds beyond the set of well-behaved Cournot games previously analyzed. Further, we find that, in Cournot games, the limit distribution of long-run outcomes is highly skewed towards the Walrasian quantity. Although longer memory increases the importance of the Cournot equilibrium, the competitive outcome remains the dominant prediction.     

Union threat and non-union employment: A natural experiment on the use of temporary employment in British firms

This paper presents the first empirical evidence on the effect of the threat of unionisation on the use of a predominantly non-union type of employment, i.e. temporary employment. The identification strategy exploits an exogenous variation in union threat induced in the UK by new legislation enabling unions to obtain recognition even against the will of the management. The analysis finds no evidence of an effect on the probability that a firm employs fixed-term workers, and some weak evidence of a negative effect on the probability of using agency workers. Furthermore, estimates of the effect on the share of temporary employment are negative and statistically insignificant. Overall, therefore, there is no support for the hypothesis that firms under the threat of unionisation are more likely to use this type of non-union employment.     

Investment and employment in manufacturing in U.S. metropolitan areas 1960–1976

This paper develops a simple vintage model of the relation between investment and employment in manufacturing. Parameters of the model are estimated using time series data for the US taken from the Surveys and Censuses of Manufactures conducted from 1954–1976. The results indicate that the age of the manufacturing capital stock was increasing in most major metropolitan areas during this period. Due to capital aging, the nature of technological change, and the pattern of depreciation, the amount of annual investment per worker required to sustain employment in manufacturing rose substantially. The dispersion of growth rates across areas also increased.     

The climacteric in late victorian Britain and France: A reappraisal of the evidence

The paper investigates the question of whether the trend rate of growth of GDP slowed down in Britain or France in the nineteenth century. We establish that real GDP belongs to the trend-stationary process class of time-series in each case rather than the difference-stationary process and using Kalman filter techniques, analyse trends in a model incorporating time-varying parameters without specifying breakpoints in advance. We find, contrary to the literature, that neither country experienced a climacteric. Our results suggest that economic historians have been prone to exaggerated views of variations in trend economic growth.     

Socio-demographics,political attitudes and informal sector employment: A cross-country analysis

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between informal sector employment and micro-level socio-demographic characteristics, political acts and attitudes, and individual norms. Using self-reported individual micro-level data from the World Values Survey for seven developing countries (China, Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Yemen), our cross-country regressions and principal component analysis reveal that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals are strong predictors of their informal sector employment. Our estimations further document that individual preferences for an economically strong, interventionist and egalitarian state and confidence in state and political institutions are positively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment, whereas variables associated with confidence in free market institutions and support for competition are negatively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment. We also show that individuals who participate either actively or inactively in peaceful and lawful political processes are significantly less likely to work in the informal sector. Finally, we document that individual norms, such as religiosity and tax morale, are negatively correlated with informal sector employment. Throughout our analysis, instead of having to rely on ad-hoc informality categorizations of third parties, we base our measurement of informal sector employment directly on the self-evaluation of individuals, who have the best information on the degree of their informality.     

Cloud manufacturing: a new manufacturing paradigm

Combining with the emerged technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of things, service-oriented technologies and high performance computing, a new manufacturing paradigm – cloud manufacturing (CMfg) – for solving the bottlenecks in the informatisation development and manufacturing applications is introduced. The concept of CMfg, including its architecture, typical characteristics and the key technologies for implementing a CMfg service platform, is discussed. Three core components for constructing a CMfg system, i.e. CMfg resources, manufacturing cloud service and manufacturing cloud are studied, and the constructing method for manufacturing cloud is investigated. Finally, a prototype of CMfg and the existing related works conducted by the authors' group on CMfg are briefly presented.     

An econometric model of U.K. manufacturing employment using survey data on expected output

A model of U.K. manufacturing employment is estimated in which output expectations data are derived from Confederation of British Industry (CBI) survey information. The output expectations terms are highly significant, and equations including them encompass more traditional models that use current and lagged output. In addition, the equations also successfully predict the sharp falls in manufacturing employment that occurred after 1979. One interesting implication of these equations is that the decline in ‘cyclically adjusted’ productivity around 1975, and the subsequent improvement around 1980, can be largely explained in terms of a prolonged period of over-optimistic output expectations by U.K. firms.     

Relationship between just-in-time manufacturing practices and performance: A meta-analytic investigation

Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing is among the most commonly researched topics in the area of operations management. This study examines the relationship between JIT manufacturing practices and performance outcomes by means of meta-analysis of correlations approach. Based on an in-depth analysis of literature spanning from 1992 to 2008, the results of this meta-analytic investigation support a positive relationship between JIT manufacturing practices and aggregate performance. However, the findings suggest that not all individual JIT practices are associated with all types of performance outcomes. This study highlights the JIT practices that have the greatest impact on individual performance outcomes and emphasizes the role of moderating factors in the relationship between JIT practices and performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed and directions for future theory building in JIT are presented.     

The advertising effect of university athletic success: A reappraisal of the evidence

In a 1987 article appearing in the Journal of Political Economy, R.E. McCormick and M. Tinsley argued that curtailment of university athletic programs could harm academic programs by reducing average freshman SAT scores. This study uses recent data and an improved specification to provide evidence that successful athletic participation does not provide measurable academic benefits to the university. In fact, evidence is provided that a university's policy regarding admissions standards primarily determines the average level of freshman SAT scores.     

Population and employment densities: structure and change

"We examine spatial patterns and their changes during the 1970s for the Los Angeles region, by estimating monocentric and polycentric density functions for employment and population. Downtown Los Angeles is clearly identified as the statistical monocentric center of the region, and it is the most consistently strong center in the polycentric patterns. Polycentric models fit statistically better than monocentric models, and there was some shift in employment distribution toward a more polycentric pattern. These findings verify the existence of polycentricity in Los Angeles and demonstrate for the first time that employment and especially population follow a polycentric pattern based on exogenously defined employment centers. The results confirm that both employment and population became more dispersed during the 1970s."     

Neglected under the law: A typology of stigmatization and effective employment protections

Some groups more commonly experience negative effects from biases in the workplace than others, in part, from a lack of universal anti-discrimination protections. While strong protections exist for some groups, others are often left to rely on a patchwork of legal protections and corporate policies to guard against bias. This article draws from social identity, stigmatization, and intersectionality theories to bring attention to susceptible classes, or those individuals who are stigmatized by society but not effectively shielded against discrimination by workplace protections. This article advances the Employment Protections and Stigmatization Classification Model typology. This model provides categorization based on the level of stigmatization individuals face and the degree to which employment protections provided by various entities are effective in reducing workplace bias and discrimination. Further, it allows for consideration and comparison of stigmatized groups across time, jurisdictions, and organizations. Three stigmatized classes are offered as examples to advance further understanding of the model.     

Local employment growth in West Germany: A dynamic panel approach

In this paper we study the dynamics of local employment growth in West Germany from 1980 to 2001. Using dynamic panel techniques, we analyse the timing of the impact of diversity and specialisation, as well as of the human capital structure of local industries. Diversity has a positive effect on employment growth in the short run, which is stronger in manufacturing than in services. Concerning specialisation we find also positive effects. They are, however, not strong enough to reinforce growth permanently, since there is mean reversion in the process. A positive effect of education is only found in manufacturing. Additionally, we look at the impact of firm size and regional wages on local employment growth.