Adjustment costs and theory of investment under uncertainty

It is shown that the stochastic investment rule for the price-setting monopolist facing random demand differs from the deterministic rule, due to the presence of the covariance of the marginal utility of profits and the MRTS between capital and labor. For the risk-neutral quantity-setting monopolist, the optimal current investment under random demand is shown to be greater than that under deterministic conditions, given that production technology is of the Cobb-Douglas type with constant returns to scale. When random wages and prices follow first-order autoregressive schemes, the risk-neutral competitive firm's current investment level is shown to be at least equal to that under certainty.     

The Exporter Wage Premium Hypothesis: An Unconditional Quantile Regression and Decomposition Approach

ABSTRACT

Relying on the World Bank Enterprise Survey dataset in 2012/13, this paper applies the unconditional quantile regression and decomposition estimation techniques to examine the hypothesis that workers in exporting firms receive higher wages than those in non-exporting firms. The results show that the relationship between export and firm’s wage bill is indirect and is transmitted through technology and firm size. Remarkably, these indirect relationships are much more pronounced at the more upper quantiles of the wage bill distribution. However, the net relationships of the interaction between export and technology are relatively larger and positive as compared to that of the interaction between export and firm size which are marginal and mixed. The decomposition analysis indicates that much of the present exporter wage premiums are largely due to the differences in the returns to the characteristics between exporting and non-exporting firms. The findings from this paper suggest directions for future work that can be directly useful for policy.     

Opening of China's Trade,Labour Market Reform and Impact on Rural Wages

Government policy in China supports urban wages at the expense of returns to farm labour. A model is developed to estimate how WTO accession and complementary labour market reform will influence factor returns in China. With WTO membership, a larger cut in manufacturing tariffs compared to agriculture will improve agriculture's terms of trade and will raise the agricultural wage. Complementary labour market reforms will further boost farm wages as labour exits agriculture in large numbers. We estimate that WTO membership and complementary labour market reforms will result in a decline in the agricultural labour force by about 25 per cent.     

Technological intensities and economic performance: a study of foreign and local electronics firms in Malaysia

This article compares technological intensities (TI) and economic performance of foreign and local electronics firms in Malaysia. The results show that foreign firms enjoyed higher labour productivity, wages and export intensity than local firms, though technological intensities between both sets of firms were similar. The econometric results show a strong and positive relationship between labour productivity and technological intensity in all the samples. The higher coefficient of TI in the local sample compared to the foreign sample shows that productivity in local firms is driven much more from in-house technological effort at host-sites than in foreign firms who can access technology from their parent plants. However, the relationship between TI (contributed by differences in R&D intensity) and export-intensity in the local sample is negative demonstrating that much of such effort is devoted to inward-oriented production. Reversing the relationship also produced the same negative relationship in the local sample. Skills intensity enjoyed a positive relationship with TI with similar coefficients. The positive and significant relationship between wages, and R&D and TI shows that the more technology-intensive local firms pay higher wages to attract human capital.     

Endogenous Growth,Increasing Returns and Externalities: An Alternative Interpretation of the Evidence

A number of recent papers have used aggregate production functions in an attempt to measure the degree of returns to scale and possible external effects in US manufacturing industries. In this paper I argue that the methods used and the results obtained are deceptive. The reason is that underlying every aggregate production function is the income accounting identity that relates output in value terms to the sum of wages and profits. This identity can be transformed, depending on the empirical paths of the wage and profit rates and of the factor shares, into different mathematical forms which resemble neoclassical production functions. Estimation of these forms, as is done in the literature discussed in the paper, poses serious problems for the interpretation of the results.     

The returns to training in Russia: a difference‐in‐differences analysis

The experience of developed countries – particularly member‐states of the OECD – has shown that employers are actively investing in developing the human capital of their employees. According to research conducted by the World Bank, more than half of the companies in developed countries provide their employees with training in one form or another. There is, however, reason to believe that the situation is quite different in Russia. Some studies have shown that the level of investment in training in Russia is much lower. This difference can be explained by the fact that employers do not see the point in such investment because it is much easier to lure employees with the required qualifications than to train their own staff. Moreover, Russia faces a problem with high employee mobility, meaning that companies are not sure that they will get a return on their investment. Given these circumstances, the present study examines whether investments in human capital in Russia are profitable. It investigates the wage return to job‐related training using a difference‐in‐differences estimator to control for unmeasured differences in ability and measured differences in past wages as a proxy for ability and motivation. Estimates use panel data from The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey – Higher School of Economics from 2004 to 2011. As predicted, positive returns to training are identified and the returns increase absolutely with the level of past wages.     

Sources of economic growth and stagnation in Iran

There is more than a 10 percentage point difference in the economic performance of Iran in roughly the two decades before and after the Islamic revolution in 1979. This paper aims to explain the difference. A standard measure of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) calculated at the aggregate level shows that over one-third of the difference in economic performance can be explained by the change in TFP growth rates in the two periods. The question is further pursued at the manufacturing level. A time-series cross sectional analysis of the manufacturing sector confirms that TFP growth rates fell after the revolution and did not recover anywhere close to their pre revolution levels even after the Iran–Iraq war. The regression analyses show that decreasing returns to scale and mark-up pricing behavior have developed in the manufacturing sector under the Islamic Republic. A Tornqvist measure of TFP, corrected for market imperfections and non-constant returns to scale technology, is used to explain sources of productivity slowdown. The results show that manufacturing TFP increases with (i) private participation rate in economic activities and (ii) exports. Manufacturing TFP falls with (iii) increase in capital-intensity and (iv) higher entry/exit barriers.     

US affiliates,infrastructure and growth: A simultaneous investigation of critical mass

A structural model of a small open economy is developed that demonstrates how the impacts of infrastructure on GDP, factor productivity, and multinational industrial location can be decomposed into direct and indirect general equilibrium effects. The model is then estimated on a panel of 28 countries and it is found that schools and telecommunications have a positive and significant direct effect on domestic growth and that there are greater marginal returns for countries with higher investment levels; a result that is suggestive of a critical mass story. However, once spurious correlation of firm location and the indirect effects through wages and multinational activity are accounted for, the total effects of telecommunications and schools on growth are found to be higher than direct estimates would suggest. The results reveal important implications for understanding the channels through which infrastructure influences growth.     

Segmentation and Increasing Returns in the Evolutionary Dynamics of Competing Techniques

The diffusion process of two competing technologies is investigated by means of a multilayer niche model modified to encompass several hierarchically related levels, such as the case of fragmentation of the population of adopters between two competing technologies due, for instance, to product differentiation. The multilevel model describes how in each of two markets two groups of firms are producing different products, giving four products in total that can be produced by means of two techniques. The result is thus a model of competition within competition and diffusion within diffusion that generates a non‐linear dynamic system. The characteristics of the system are investigated by means of simulation. The long‐run behaviour of the model is sensitive to initial conditions, though an unfavourable start‐up can be overcome by means of increasing returns to scale. Indeed, returns to scale play a crucial role in determining the final outcome, although very high returns to scale imply instability. Furthermore, the winning technology need not be the most efficient and stability of a trajectory does not imply stability of the relative technique.     

Offshoring and occupational wages: Some empirical evidence

Offshoring has changed the pattern of international competition; labor in specific occupations rather than whole firms and sectors are now facing competition. Accordingly, wages in offshorable occupations are affected in new ways. In this article, we investigate the effects of offshoring on relative occupational wages in 13 countries for 1990–2003. Our findings show that offshoring competiveness is associated with higher relative wages in offshorable occupations, and that export growth of IT-related services leads to higher relative wages in offshorable occupations, whereas import growth of such services reduces them.     

Trade, wages, and the political economy of trade protection: evidence from the Colombian trade reforms

Worker industry affiliation plays a crucial role in how trade policy affects wages in many trade models. Yet, most research has focused on how trade policy affects wages by altering the economy-wide returns to a specific worker characteristic (i.e., skill or education) rather than through worker industry affiliation. This paper exploits drastic trade liberalizations in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s to investigate the relationship between protection and industry wage premiums. We relate wage premiums to trade policy in an empirical framework that accounts for the political economy of trade protection. Accounting for time-invariant political economy factors is critical. When we do not control for unobserved time-invariant industry characteristics, we find that workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. Allowing for industry fixed effects reverses the result: trade protection increases relative wages. This positive relationship persists when we instrument for tariff changes. Our results are in line with short- and medium-run models of trade where labor is immobile across sectors or, alternatively, with the existence of industry rents that are reduced by trade liberalization. In the context of the current debate on the rising income inequality in developing countries, our findings point to a source of disparity beyond the well-documented rise in the economy-wide skill premium: because tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors employing a high fraction of less-skilled workers, the decrease in the wage premiums in these sectors affected such workers disproportionately.     

The limits of leverage

When trading incurs proportional costs, leverage can scale an asset's return only up to a maximum multiple, which is sensitive to its volatility and liquidity. In a model with one safe and one risky asset, with constant investment opportunities and proportional costs, we find strategies that maximize long‐term returns given average volatility. As leverage increases, rising rebalancing costs imply declining Sharpe ratios. Beyond a critical level, even returns decline. Holding the Sharpe ratio constant, higher asset volatility leads to superior returns through lower costs.     

The welfare and employment effects of trade and factor taxes with variable factor supply

This paper develops a general trade model with many traded goods, many internationally mobile factors, and with endogenous labor supply. Within this framework, the employment and welfare effects of taxes on trade, on wages and on the returns of the internationally mobile factors are examined. The employment maximizing and the first- and second-best tax structures are determined. The analysis identifies the conditions under which variable labor supply increases the welfare cost of a trade and a capital tax, and demonstrates the need for joint determination of taxes on trade and on the returns of factors in variable domestic supply.     

Do Newly Founded Firms Pay Lower Wages? First Evidence from Germany

Using a linked employer–employee data set for Germany, this paper analyses wage setting in a cohort of newly founded and other establishments from 1997 to 2001. While theory provides alternative explanations for higher or lower wages in newly founded firms, we show empirically that start-ups tend to pay lower wages, ceteris paribus. On average, wages in newly founded establishments are 8% lower than in similar incumbent firms. This negative wage differential is substantially smaller in eastern than in western Germany. The wage differential is shown to decline over time as the newly founded firms become more mature.     

Examining Determinants of Foreign Wage Premiums in China

We estimate foreign wage premiums for every 3‐digit manufacturing industry in China and discover a wide range of premiums both for ‘foreign’ ownership and for overseas Chinese ownership. Foreign ownership generates larger and more prevalent wage premiums than overseas Chinese ownership, but both produce premiums that respond similarly in estimates of determinants. Using the number of computers per worker to measure firms' technology levels, we find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that foreign firms pay higher wages to reduce the risk of worker turnover and the accompanying technology leakage in 76 to 78 per cent of industries. However, this determinant explains only 5 to 6 per cent of the foreign wage premium. We find the most intensive support for the ‘fair wage’ hypothesis that foreign firms pay higher wages because they are more profitable than domestic firms and workers in more profitable firms expect to be paid more, otherwise they will shirk. This hypothesis explains an average of 8 to 9 per cent of the foreign wage premiums, with support found in 72 to 75 per cent of the industries. When we consider the best combination of explanatory variables to include in each industry's wage regression, we find evidence consistent with our combined hypotheses in most industries, but we still find large residual foreign wage premiums.     

信息技术行业企业规模与技术创新关系的实证研究

企业规模是影响技术创新的一个重要因素,研究企业规模与技术创新之间的关系,对国家制定正确的产业政策,具有十分重要的意义。文章结合信息技术行业应用方差分析对企业规模与技术创新之间的关系进行实证研究,实证结果表明：在信息技术行业,企业规模对技术创新具有显著性的影响,中小企业的技术创新水平要大于大规模企业的技术创新水平。因此,应加大对信息技术行业中小企业技术创新的扶持力度,以促进我国整体技术创新水平的提高。     

Goods and factors liberalization under increasing returns to scale

This paper develops a general equilibrium model with alternative forms of import restrictions, international capital mobility, and taxes on the rate of return on foreign capital in the context of a small open economy using an external increasing returns technology. Within this framework, this paper analyses the price and welfare effects of import liberalization in the presence of tax on foreign capital and of factor flows liberalization in the presence of alternative forms of import restrictions. It is shown, among other things, that, in contrast to the existing literature on constant returns to scale economy, the optimal policy towards foreign factors is possibly tax under each form of import restrictions.     

Venture capital investing by information technology companies: Did it pay?

While corporate venture capital programs offer prospects for direct financial returns and strategic benefits, there is little evidence regarding whether they deliver economically significant value to sponsoring firms. We take an initial step in addressing this question by evaluating direct returns of programs of U.S. information technology companies during 1990–2002. Direct gains (losses) were widely dispersed and bimodally distributed, based on IRR and net cash flow metrics. Timing of initiation within the venture capital cycle; program scale; and annual investment, write-down, and harvest behavior were associated with differences in returns. We also explore how program characteristics may relate to their attractiveness as platforms from which to pursue strategic benefits.     

Trade in High-Tech Services

This paper examines the size, scope, and potential implications of trade in high-tech services in the U.S. The results suggest that many service activities are tradable, tradable service activities tend to employ more educated workers and pay higher wages, and high-tech services account for a large share of service activities that are tradable. Service exporters are more prevalent in high-tech industries with larger establishments and higher wages. Within industries, service exporters tend to be larger, pay higher wages, and are more productive. Tradable service activities seem consistent with U.S. comparative advantage and, as a result, less likely to be vulnerable to offshoring. Consistent with this, recent employment growth in tradable service industries is not significantly different than employment growth in non-tradable service industries.     

Analyzing determinants of value creation in domestic and cross border acquisitions in India

The present study seeks to assess the acquiring company announcement gains, and determinants thereof, in domestic and cross border acquisitions in India. For this purpose, 268 acquisitions comprising of 202 cross border acquisitions and 66 domestic acquisitions constitute the sample set. Standard event study methodology has been employed for computing the announcement returns. Further, regression analysis has been conducted to assess the sources of wealth gains in domestic and cross border acquisition. The results of event study indicate that cross border acquisitions have created significantly higher wealth gains than the domestic ones. Further, the results of regression analysis highlight that cross border acquisitions, pursued by the acquiring companies in technology intensive sector, for the target companies also in technology intensive sector, create superior wealth gains. The reason being, such cross border acquisitions provide an opportunity to the acquiring company to combine and judiciously utilize intangible resources of both the companies on a broader scale across new geographies. Thus, the study contributes to the existing literature on internalization theory by extending it to an emerging market like India.