Utilization of fixed capital and Soviet industrial growth

Growth rates of output and factor productivity in Soviet industry fluctuate around a long-term downward trend. These fluctuations can be partially explained by fluctuations in the growth of services of capital. The capacity utilization rate is taken as a proxy for the extent of utilization of capital stock. Variations in the capacity utilization rate explain a significant part of the changes in the rate of growth of total factor productivity between 1970–1983. Declines in the capacity utilization rate are caused by errors in the allocation of investment, which create an imbalance of capacities between raw-materials and manufacturing sectors.Useful suggestions by Emil Bej, Robert Cambell, Richard Harmstone, Kenneth Gray, and Josef Brada are grateful acknowledged     

Multifactor productivity and its determinants: an empirical analysis for Mexican manufacturing

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we estimate production functions for the Mexican manufacturing sector and for 14 comprehensive groups, allowing us to construct various measures of multifactor productivity. Second, we analyse some of the determinants of productivity growth. We find that, on the one hand, there is a positive relationship between market concentration and technology adoption; on the other hand, both technology adoption and human capital promote productivity, whilst market concentration exerts a negative influence on it. Our results suggest that, once controlling for the effect on technology adoption, more concentration impacts negatively productivity growth.     

Technical efficiency and region The U.S. manufacturing sector 1972–1977

In this paper we estimate the extent of technological bias in an interregional context for U.S. manufacturing during the period 1972–1977 using a factor augmenting production function approach. We present estimates of the elasticity of factor substitution for each of the 48 states in the sample using a variable elasticity of substitution production function. Next, we use these estimates to generate estimates of the rates of change in the efficiencies of capital and labor inputs and compare these estimates across states and census regions. We also examine and compare estimates of total factor productivity across states and regions. We ,find that the average annual rates of growth of capital efficiency during the period are 5.5 percent in the Northeast, 5.3 percent in the Northcentral, 5.6 percent in the West and 3.1 percent in the South. The rates of change of the efficiencies of labor are found to be negative across all regions except the South. The rates of change of total factor productivity are found to be 1.7 percent in the Northeast, 2.3 percent in the Northcentral, 2.4 percent in the West and 1.7 percent in the South. We also find that between 33 percent and 56 percent of the growth of output across regions is due to technical progress.     

Productivity and efficiency in the US: effects of business cycles and public capital

We add to the literature on the US productivity slowdown and effects of public capital on productivity by employing Malmquist productivity indexes to measure productivity. These indexes allow us to decompose productivity growth into efficiency change and technological innovation. We derive these components for each observation, which we exploit to explore factors which may lead to differences in productivity across regions, including business cycles, both own-state and cross-border public infrastructure investment, and relative sizes of the manufacturing, service and public sector. Our results suggest that the components of total factor productivity change lend important insights into the fairly complex effects of public capital on productivity growth.     

Aggregate productivity losses from factor misallocation across Chinese manufacturing firms

Aggregate productivity can be largely determined by how efficiently production factors are allocated across heterogeneous establishments. This paper estimates aggregate productivity losses from factor misallocation using a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms. We analyze the institutional background and provide some stylized facts on factor misallocation of capital and labor in China. Using an approximation method based on the estimation of input gaps, we find that aggregate productivity losses reach an average rate of 11.18 percentage points per year. On average, capital and labor misallocation account for 6.73 and 4.45 percentage points, respectively. State ownership plays an important role in generating factor misallocation and productivity losses. Our results imply that factor misallocation have become a major obstacle preventing China from moving to a more efficient economy.     

Technology capital: the price of admission to the growth club

We assess long-run patterns of global agricultural productivity growth between 1970 and 2005 and examine the relationship between investments in technology capital and productivity. To measure agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) we employ a Solow-type growth accounting method to decompose output growth into input and TFP growth. For technology capital we construct two indexes reflecting national capacities in agricultural research and education-extension for 87 developing countries. We then correlate technology capital levels with long-term growth rates in agricultural TFP. Our findings show that global agricultural TFP growth as a whole accelerated since 1980, although performance was very uneven across developing countries. TFP growth rates were significantly influenced by technology capital. Marginal improvements to research capacity, given a minimal level of extension and schooling existed, were associated with faster TFP growth. However, marginal increases in extension-schooling without commensurate improvements in research capacity did not improve productivity performance.     

提高服务企业劳动生产率——人力资源管理角度

劳动生产率是衡量企业生产能力和竞争水平的重要指标,服务企业尤其是劳动密集型服务企业普遍存在劳动生产率偏低现象。人力资本是服务企业既具潜力又耗投入的资本,从人力资源管理角度合理进行组织设计、人员配置、专业培训、薪酬与激励和企业文化的建设能有效提高服务企业劳动生产率。     

Costly external finance,reallocation, and aggregate productivity

Empirical studies document that resource reallocation across production units plays an important role in accounting for aggregate productivity growth in the US manufacturing. Financial market frictions could distort the reallocation process and hence may hinder aggregate productivity growth. This paper studies the quantitative impact of costly external finance on aggregate productivity through resource reallocation across firms with idiosyncratic productivity shocks. A partial equilibrium model calibrated to the US manufacturing data shows that costly external finance causes inefficient output reallocation from high productivity firms to low productivity firms and as a result leads to a 1 percent loss in aggregate TFP.     

Factor Utilization and Adjusted Productivity Estimates for the UK*

This paper derives series for capital utilization, labour effort and total factor productivity (TFP) for the UK from a general equilibrium model with variable utilization and labour adjustment costs. Capital utilization tracks survey‐based measures closely, but persistent movements in total hours worked mean our labour effort series is not as highly correlated with its comparators. Our estimated TFP series is less cyclical than the traditional Solow residual, although a weighted average of capital utilization and labour effort – aggregate factor utilization – and the Solow residual are not closely related.     

Is technical change embodied in the capital stock or new investment?

The question of technical change and productivity growth is one of the fundamental empirical issues of our time. Surprisingly, Solow's original question of whether technical change is embodied in investment or the entire capital stock has been largely neglected. This paper seeks to bridge the early work of Solow and others on the extent of embodiment of technical change with the more modern approach to estimating the structure of production and technical change using multifactor cost functions. We also attempted to identify the source and structural nature of embodied technical change by decomposing it. Our theoretical model is applied to a pooled cross-section of six OECD countries for the 1965–1989 period. Our preferred model is one of full factor-augmenting embodied technical change because technical change augmenting the entire capital stock tends to overstate quality change in the aggregate capital stock more than that embodied in new investment. This model specification supports the view that technical change is embodied in the stock of capital structure and is embodied in new investment of capital equipment.     

Nature and determinants of productivity growth of foreign subsidiaries in Central and East European countries

The paper examines the determinants of productivity growth in foreign manufacturing subsidiaries in five Central and East European (CEE) countries by analysing patterns of control, nature of firms’ capabilities and firms’ market orientations. Building on the so-called ‘subsidiary development’ perspective, we show that productivity growth is determined jointly by corporate governance, production capability and market orientation variables. Within a dominantly production-oriented mandate, CEE subsidiaries have a relatively high level of autonomy in the control of their business functions. Majority foreign equity shareholding has a significant and positive impact on subsidiaries’ productivity growth. Our results show strong regional characteristics.     

Public infrastructure,input efficiency and productivity growth in the Canadian food processing industry

Canadian food processing is an important manufacturing industry, accounting for 13 percent of shipments. By its nature food processing depends on infrastructure capital. Our objective is to estimate infrastructure’s effects on input requirements, cost and productivity. The increase in capital and decrease in materials were respectively 2.5 and 3 times greater than the −0.07 infrastructure elasticity of labor. Infrastructure investment was cost-reducing by inducing reductions in employment and intermediate inputs. A 1 percent increase caused cost to decline by 0.16 percent. Infrastructure capital was a major contributor to productivity, annually contributing 0.5 percentage points. This was nearly double TFP growth.      

Productivity and Growth in UK Industries: An Intangible Investment Approach*

This article calculates some facts for the ‘knowledge economy’. Using new data, first we document UK intangible investment and find that (i) this is greater than tangible investment by £37bn in 2008; (ii) R&D is 11% of total intangible investment, software 15%, and training and organizational capital 22% each; (iii) the most intangible‐intensive industries are manufacturing and financial services. Next, we measure the contribution of intangible capital to growth for 2000–08. We find that intangible capital accounts for 23% of labour productivity growth and treating intangibles as investment lowers total factor productivity growth in the 2000s by 24% (R&D lowers it by 3%).     

Trust or bust: Growth effects of knowledge,human and social capital revisited

Social capital consists of trust, collective values, and shared norms. It helps society to work efficiently and, hence, promotes knowledge accumulation and growth. This paper identifies the contribution of social capital to differences in total factor productivity among European subnational regions, but, unlike other studies, it focuses on the effects of interregional differences in social capital. To do so, the paper employs a spatial Durbin model of a social-capital extended Cobb-Douglas production function. Our results suggest that transfers of knowledge might be secondary to the presence of collectivism and human capital in knowledge-generating regions. Although knowledge can cross boundaries, an absence of skills and trust limits local growth capacity. Our estimations also suggest the presence of gravity effects emanating from social and human capital in which some regions lose against others nearby that have more abundant social and human capital.     

Australia’s mining productivity decline: implications for MFP measurement

This paper investigates the mining sector’s poor productivity performance as measured by the growth accounting formula for multifactor productivity (MFP) index during the recent mining boom in Australia. We provide an alternative measure of productivity growth by estimating a translog variable cost function, with parameters that separate productivity growth due to technical change from that due to the effects of returns to scale, capacity utilisation and natural resource inputs. The results show that the average MFP growth in Australian mining based on the dual cost-function measure of technical change is 2 % over the sample period 1974–1975 to 2007–2008, rather than ?0.2 % from the published index. The difference arises because declining natural resource inputs, the effects of capacity utilisation and returns to scale have all reduced the ‘true’ MFP growth.     

Impact of ICT on the productivity of the firm: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This paper aims to explore the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on labor productivity growth in Turkish manufacturing. This is the first attempt at exploring the impact of ICT on productivity in Turkish manufacturing at the firm level. The analysis is based on firm level data obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and covers the period from 2003 to 2012. The data used in the analysis includes all firms employing 19+ workers in Turkish manufacturing industry. Growth accounting results show that the contributions of conventional and ICT capital to value added growth are not significantly different from each other. On the other hand, results based both on static (fixed-effects) and dynamic panel data analysis highlight the positive influence on firms’ productivity exerted by ICT capital. The findings show that the impact of ICT capital on productivity is larger by about 25 to 50% than that of conventional capital. This contribution of ICT capital is higher than that of non-ICT capital for small sized and low-tech firms. Our findings imply that investing in ICT capital increases firm productivity by increasing the productivity of labor and also that convention growth accounting approaches may not be adequate to identify such linkages.     

Productivity, convergence and policy: a study of OECD countries and industries

This paper analyses trends in labour productivity and its underlying determinants in a panel of OECD countries from 1979 to 2002. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to estimate a Malmquist measure of multifactor productivity (MFP) change. We decompose the growth in labour productivity into (i) net technological change (ii) input biased technical change (IBTC) (iii) efficiency change and (iv) capital accumulation. We analyse the effect of each of these factors in the transition towards the equilibrium growth paths of both labour productivity and per capita GDP for the OECD countries, controlling for the effects of different policies and institutions. The results indicate that on average gaps in productivity or income levels are narrowing down although there is no evidence to suggest that the entire OECD area comprises a single convergence “club”. Using kernel estimation methods we find that that labour productivity and per capita GDP are settling toward a twin peak (bimodal) distribution. Panel unit root tests over an extended (1960–2001) period provide general support for the convergence hypothesis. Analysis of the contributions of productivity growth within industries and sectoral composition changes show that aggregate productivity change is predominantly driven by ‘net’ within sector effects with very little contribution emerging from sectoral shifts (the ‘in-between’ static or dynamic effects resulting from higher or above average productivity industries gaining employment shares or low productivity industries losing shares).     

Comparisons of agricultural productivity growth in China and India

We measure and compare agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components (efficiency and technical change) in China and India and test the TFP series for the existence of structural breaks relating the evolution of TFP to policy milestones. Our results show that agricultural TFP growth accelerates in China after 1979 and in India after 1974, although China’s agricultural sector clearly outperforms India’s. The main explanation of these differentials is that agricultural growth in China benefited from more fundamental institutional and policy reforms in agriculture than India. There is some evidence that the transformation of industry in China was also important for agricultural TFP growth. Manufacture growth absorbed labor and reduced employment in agriculture, creating incentives for capital investment and technical change that kept output per worker in agriculture growing at high rates. Fewer changes in agricultural policies and in the dynamics of manufacturing in India resulted in slower growth in agricultural productivity, despite policy changes that accelerated economic growth in recent years.     

A comparison of multifactor productivity calculations of the U.S. agricultural sector

Since the late 1970s, there have been fourteen studies that have estimated multifactor productivity (MFP) growth rates for the U.S. agricultural sector. The estimates of average annual MFP growth rates have ranged from 1.15 to 1.94 percent per year for studies using the gross productivity approach. The purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons for these different estimates. We consider theoretical and empirical factors and do not find any single reason that satisfactory explains the variation. The alternative estimates appear to be most sensitive to the coverage of years.     

Productivity and Trade Orientation in UK Manufacturing*

We show that improvements in aggregate productivity in UK manufacturing during the first years after the implementation of the Euro, by the UK's main trading partners in Europe, are determined by both market share reallocation and within‐company productivity growth. Furthermore, we outline a structural methodology for estimating parameters of a production function linking the unobservable productivity to endogenous company‐level trade orientation, investment and exit decisions. This allows us to back out consistent and unbiased estimates of productivity dynamics by trade orientation of companies within four‐digit UK manufacturing industries using FAME data over the period 1994–2001. Our estimates of productivity dynamics indicate that improvements in aggregate productivity were mainly driven by market share reallocations away from inefficient and towards efficient exporting companies alongside productivity improvements within non‐exporting companies.