International migration: facts,figures, policies

Recent trends in international migration in OECD member countries are summarized using data from the SOPEMI system, under which OECD countries report annually on international migration affecting them. The synopsis includes a review of recent changes in migration policies, as well as a summary of the impact of immigration on employment and demographic trends.     

The down-payment constraint and UK housing market: Does the theory fit the facts?

This paper considers empirical implications of the down-payment constraint for the UK housing market. It shows that, at the aggregate-level, models of the housing market with this constraint are consistent with a number of stylized facts. The paper then exploits variation across local housing markets and considers how leverage affects the response of house price inflation to shocks. The evidence, based on data for 147 district-level housing markets for the period 1993–2002, suggests that a large incidence of households with high leverage (loan-to-value ratios) raises the sensitivity of house prices to a shock. This is also consistent with the down-payment constraint model.     

Detrending,stylized facts and the business cycle

The stylized facts of macroeconomic time series can be presented by fitting structural time series models. Within this framework, we analyse the consequences of the widely used detrending technique popularised by Hodrick and Prescott (1980). It is shown that mechanical detrending based on the Hodrick–Prescott filter can lead investigators to report spurious cyclical behaviour, and this point is illustrated with empirical examples. Structural time-series models also allow investigators to deal explicitly with seasonal and irregular movements that may distort estimated cyclical components. Finally, the structural framework provides a basis for exposing the limitations of ARIMA methodology and models based on a deterministic trend with a single break.     

用与时俱进的理论品质坚持解放思想实事求是的思想路线

中国革命与建设的伟大历程 ,中华民族的伟大复兴都必须坚持马克思主义与时俱进的理论品质 ,必须坚持解放思想 ,实事求是的思想路线。     

Productivity, Profitability, and Firm Value

This study examines the role of productivity in the prediction of future profitability and firm valuation. The results indicate that productivity does not provide much information about future profitability incremental to that provided by current profit rate, but explains cross-sectional differences in market value incremental to that explained by book value and current profit rate.     

Quotas,Productivity, and Prices: The Case of Anchovy Fishing

I exploit a 2009 reform that introduced individual fishing quotas (catch shares) for Peruvian anchovy—the largest fishery in the world—to assess the causal impact of production quotas on within‐firm productivity and market prices. Unique features of the data allow me to create two alternative counterfactuals: (i) anchovy fishing operations in a region of the country that was mandated to implement quotas with a delay, and (ii) variation in quota allocations across ships. I find that quotas do not increase within‐asset or within‐firm productivity in quantities. Instead, a 200% increase in anchovy prices benefits extraction firms through higher revenues, consistent with two mechanisms enacted by individual fishing quotas: more orderly industry operations reducing excess supply and an increase in bargaining power of extraction firms with respect to fish‐processing. Several market characteristics across geographies differentially affect market prices after the quota regime. Supplementary evidence on fewer operational infractions, higher product quality, and a lower banking delinquency observed during the quota regime suggests the existence of efficiency gains rather than purely rent transfers.     

Input,Output, and Environmental Management Productivity: Effects on Firm Performance

Firms invest considerable resources to control any of their operations that may have environmental impacts in an attempt to reduce such impacts but also generate economic value. Various studies of the basic creation or destruction of monetary value through environmental performance offer contradictory evidence. Therefore, the present study proposes a new definition of environmental management as the transformation of inputs (resources assigned) into outputs (valuable results). Both inputs and outputs should be taken into account to explain financial outcomes; further consideration should also include a third aspect, namely, ‘environmental management productivity’, which describes the relationship between the outputs and inputs of environmental management. Empirical analyses of Spanish firms with a certified environmental management system subject to the European Union's CO₂ emissions trading system provide evidence that all three aspects must be considered in combination to achieve a more comprehensive view of the impact of environmental management on financial performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Productivity,seniority and wages: new evidence from personnel data

Wages may be observed to increase with seniority because of firm-specific human capital accumulation or because of self-selection of better workers in longer jobs. In both these cases, the upward sloping wage profile in cross-sectional regressions would reflect higher productivity of more senior workers. If this were true, the observation of an effect of seniority on wages would depend on the presence of controls for individual productivity. In this paper we replicate, using personnel data from a large Italian firm, the results of the pioneering work of Medoff and Abraham [Quarterly Journal of Economics (1980); The Journal of Human Resources, 15(2) (1981)] in which supervisors' evaluations were used as productivity indicators. Since the validity of supervisors' evaluations as measures of productivity has been widely criticised, we extend the work of Medoff and Abraham using different direct measures of productivity based on recorded absenteeism and misconduct episodes. Both these indicators and supervisors' evaluation suggest that the observed effect of seniority on wages does not reflect a higher productivity of more senior workers. Only at the lowest levels of the firm's hierarchy, the human capital theory contributes to explain the effect of seniority on wages. At least at all other levels, the explanation of the observed upward sloping profile has to be based on theories in which wages are deferred for incentive or insurance reasons.     

Knowledge Spillovers,ICT and Productivity Growth

This paper looks at the channels through which intangible assets affect productivity growth. The econometric analysis exploits a new data set on intangible investment (INTAN‐Invest) in conjunction with EUKLEMS productivity estimates for 10 EU member states from 1998 to 2007. We find that (a) the output elasticity of intangible capital depends upon ICT intensity, consistent with complementarities between ICT and intangible capital; (b) non‐R&D intangible capital has a higher estimated output elasticity than its factor share, as does (c) an index of labour composition. The last two findings are consistent with growth spillovers from investments in knowledge‐based/intangible capital and skills.     

私募股权、公开上市和生产效率

本文以公司在资本市场上公开上市为背景,以是否具有私募股权融资背景为标准,选取了384家上市公司为研究样本,使用索洛余值法、随机前沿分析模型等方法,实证分析私募股权投资对改善企业生产效率的作用。研究结果发现,无论是否有私募股权投资,企业上市后的全要素生产率均高于上市前;有私募股权投资的企业全要素生产率在上市前要低于无私募股权投资的企业,但是上市后则超过了无私募股权投资的企业。     

Productivity,technological change and international competitiveness

Contrary to widespread skepticism in industry and in many governmental agencies, research on innovational processes can be of major practical value for policy guidance in both sectors of decision-making. By way of illustration, this paper will briefly review our studies in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan covering three problem areas which have generated increasing domestic concern in recent years: productivity, technological change and international competitiveness. These studies have continued since their initiation 15 years ago; the National Science Foundation has supported some of the projects in each of these problem areas. In each case, attention will be given first to outlining some of the basic needs for research and then to summarizing some of our findings.     

Productivity and Inflation: a Paradox

In his Budget speech, Mr. Lawson drew attention to the greatly improved record of productivity growth in UK manufacturing:
"During the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, growth in manufacturing productivity in the UK was the lowest of all the seven major industrial countries in the world. During the 1980s, our annual rate of growth of output per head in manufacturing has been the highest of all the seven major industrial countries."
Ironically this success in regard to productivity may cause a problem in regard to inflation if the UK moves to a fixed exchange rate policy within the EMS. In this Viewpoint we report the consequence of such a move and also describe the possible required rise in the exchange rate if price stability is to be attained. We show that price stability requires the exchange rate to rise (i) to offset world inflation and (ii) to compensate for the productivity gap between the traded and non-traded sectors.     

Post-War Growth, Productivity Convergence and Reconstruction

In this paper, it is shown that aggregate cross-country analyses of the growth process of the industrial countries should take reconstruction effects into account. The enormous growth rates in many European countries and in Japan in the fifties which often appear as outliers in aggregate analyses of productivity convergence can be understood as a catching-up with respect to the past. Neoclassical capital deepening combined with arguments from growth models relying on the stock of knowledge, knowledge spillovers and technological diffusion as the source of economic growth can explain the fast reconstruction after the war, without referring to country-specific growth factors.     

Endogenous search,price dispersion,and welfare

This paper studies the welfare cost of inflation in a frictional monetary economy with endogenous consumer search. Equilibrium entails price dispersion, where sellers compete for buyers by posting prices. We identify three channels through which inflation affects welfare. The real balance channel is the source of welfare loss. Its interaction with the price posting channel generates a welfare cost larger than Lucas (2000). The search channel reduces the welfare cost by more than one half through general equilibrium effect. The aggregate effect of these three channels on welfare is non-monotonic. Additionally, the welfare cost of inflation fluctuations is negligible.     

Productivity,Technology and Economic Growth: What is the Relationship?

The relationship between productivity, technology and economic growth has been debated extensively in the endogenous growth, growth accounting, New Economy and policy literature. This paper briefly surveys the literature on total factor productivity (TFP) calculations – the various techniques and problems associated with it. We argue that TFP is not a measure of technological change and only under ideal conditions does it measure the supernormal profits associated with technological change. The critical driving force of economic growth is not the super normal profits that technological change generates but rather the continuous creation of opportunities for further technological development. Six illustrations of when TFP fails to correctly measure these super normal profits are provided. A version Carlaw and Lipsey's (2003b) model of endogenous general purpose technology‐ driven growth is then utilized to make some progress toward answering Prescott's (1998) call for a theory of TFP. The model is used to simulate artificial data and connect theoretical assumptions of returns to scale and resource costs to the conditions under which TFP miss‐measures the actual growth of technological knowledge.     

Collective leadership: Practice,theory, and praxis

An act of leadership is always an act of practical theory. We lead because we hold visions of the world as it ought to be, because of the not yet, because of the potential that we see in ideas and people. Yet, there still exists a perceived binary between leadership theory (in the strong sense) and leadership practice, a binary that divides organizations, classrooms, and the differing bodies of leadership literature. In this Symposium, Duncan Waite and his colleagues discuss the barriers they have faced in bringing theory to the educational leadership classroom, as well as the promise they feel theory holds for more productive, equitable, and humane schooling organizations.     

Property rights theory,transaction costs theory,and agency theory: an organizational economics approach to strategic management

Property rights theory has common antecedents with contractual theories of the firm such as transaction costs and agency theories, and is yet distinct from these theories. We illustrate fundamental theoretical principles derived from these three theories by analyzing the business case of oil field unitization. Theoretical principles and application of theory to oil field unitization are each summarized. From this, it is possible to see how property rights theory is well suited to explain business situations where inefficient economic outcomes persist. Additionally, property rights theory forges new theoretical connections with other branches of organizational economics, in particular, resource‐based theory. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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).     

Chinese stratagem culture: Nature,formation, and implications

A widespread utilization of stratagem in politics, foreign relations, and business is a cultural phenomenon in China, yet insufficient attention has been paid to the strategic implications of such a culture by Western academics and practitioners. Such a cultural phenomenon is rooted in antiquity, shaping the thinking and strategic behavior of the Chinese people. This article conceptualizes stratagem in the context of China, theorizes the formation of stratagem culture, and discusses the implications for both academics and practitioners.     

Productivity,R&D Spillovers and Educational Attainment*

Economists have long agreed that the local availability of a more qualified workforce generates significant spillovers. This study suggests that these externalities may arise because plants by having access to a more qualified workforce at a regional level, can benefit more from R&D spillovers than those located in areas with less qualified workforce. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of British establishments drawn from the Annual Business Inquiry over the period 1997–2002. The main results are consistent with our expectations that the regional differences in the industry‐level educational attainment of the workforce available to a plant will condition its capability of absorbing R&D spillovers.