Entry, reforms, complementarity and performance: A tale of two Indian manufacturing sectors

In this paper, we use plant-level data from two Indian industries, namely, electrical machinery and textiles, to examine the empirical relationship between structural reforms like abandonment of entry restrictions to the product market, competition and firm-level productivity and efficiency. These industries have faced different sets of policies since Independence but both were restricted in the adoption of technology and in the development of optimal scales of production. They also belonged to the first set of industries that benefited from the liberalization process started in the 1980s. Our results suggest that both the industries have improved their efficiency and scales of operation by the turn of the century. However, the process of adjustment seems to have been worked out more fully for electrical machinery. We also find evidence of spatial fragmentation of the market as late as 2000–2001. Gains in labour productivity were much more evident in states that either have a strong history of industrial activity or those that have experienced significant improvements in business environment since 1991.     

Impact of R&D and Technology Diffusion on Productivity Growth: Empirical Evidence for 10 OECD Countries

This paper examines the empirical evidence on the impact of performed R&D and of R&D embodied in intermediate and capital goods on productivity performance in 10 major OECD countries over the last two decades. To quantify intersectoral and international technology flows, industry-level embodied R&D variables were constructed from an input–output (IO) R&D embodiment model. The productivity variables used are discrete Divisia growth indexes of total factor productivity (TFP), which were estimated from an IO growth accounting model. The results from pooled regressions indicate that the rates of return of the R&D variables were positively significant and increasing in the 1980s. In particular, embodied R&D is an important source for TFP growth in services, indicating very high social returns of the flows of capital-embodied technology into this sector. Moreover, the information and communi-cation technology (ICT) cluster of industries played a major role in the generation and cquisition of new technologies at the international level.     

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.     

Technology Flows Matrix Estimation Revisited

This paper revisits the methodological problems of estimating matrices showing how technological advances--measured by industry research and development outlays--flow from industries of origin to using industries. An early effort relied upon the analysis of 15 112 US patents. Several alternative methods are explored to address methodological questions concerning the choice of carrier matrices, the handling of diagonal elements, and the treatment of capital goods flows. Technology flow matrices estimated using diverse combinations of assumptions are tested for goodness-of-fit relative to the original patent-based matrix and for their ability to "predict' productivity growth in Solowian regression equations. Although some anomalies emerge, the best results are obtained using combined first-order transactions and capital flows matrices with diagonal elements adjusted to reflect the ratio of internal process to all R&D spending. However, flow data compiled using the Leontief inverse matrix add explanatory power in productivity growth regressions.     

Measuring the Impact of Direct and Indirect R&D on the Productivity Growth of Industries: Using the Yale Technology Concordance

This paper investigates the impact of direct and indirect R&D on the productivity growth of 30 French industries during the period 1978–92. The main aim of this paper is to assess the appropriateness of the Yale Technology Concordance (YTC) as a proxy for indirect R&D flows. We compare the effect on productivity growth of the Yale proxy with the traditional proxy based on goods input–output flows, and assess their suitability for different groups of industries. Results indicate that the indirect YTC proxy performs slightly better than the traditional proxy, as a result of superior performance in the high-tech and service sectors in particular.     

The importance of efficient use in the adoption of technology: A micro panel data analysis

Even after the introduction of the new rice technology (Green revolution) about more than two decades ago, the food shortage problem has not decreased significantly in many developing countries. Obviously, there can be no dispute over the importance of the new rice technology in bringing about improvements in agricultural productivity. But, there are factors other than the choice of technology which are equally important, and a neglect of these factors may lead to a complete negation of any possible gains in productivity arising from the use of new technology. One such factor is the efficient use of the technology. This paper examines farm-specific application of the new rice technology by using a micro-level panel data from a South Indian district. The results show a wide variation in the efficient use of the technology by the sample farmers. Extension and education were identified as two major constraining factors.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through N.R. Adam.     

行业间生产率联动对中国工业生产率增长的影响——引入经济距离矩阵的空间GMM估计

本文把反映行业间生产率联动的购买距离矩阵和销售距离矩阵引入空间自回归模型,研究行业间生产率联动对我国工业生产率增长的影响。为了克服引入社会经济距离矩阵带来的异方差和矩阵的行标准化问题,本文采用空间GMM法进行模型的估计。结果表明,行业生产率联动对我国工业生产率增长具有显著的正影响,并且在资源密集型、劳动密集型和资本密集型工业行业中,行业间生产率联动对工业生产率增长的影响相对于其他因素的影响更为稳健。此外,由销售距离矩阵所体现的联动作用效果整体上大于购买距离矩阵体现的相关效果。     

Efficiency, productivity, and scale economies in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry

The paper examines efficiency, productivity and scale economies in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry. Productivity change is analyzed using Malmquist indices, and efficiency is estimated using data envelopment analysis. The results indicate that the majority of firms below median size in the industry are operating with increasing returns to scale, and the majority of firms above median size are operating with decreasing returns to scale. However, a significant number of firms in each size decile have achieved constant returns to scale. Over the sample period, the industry experienced significant gains in total factor productivity, and there is an upward trend in scale and allocative efficiency. More diversified firms and insurance groups were more likely to achieve efficiency and productivity gains. Higher technology investment is positively related to efficiency and productivity improvements.     

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.     

中国高技术产业的全要素生产率及产业比较

基于2001～2007年中国5个高技术产业的细分行业的面板数据,运用Malmquist指数构建一个三投入三产出的模型,分别测算了高技术产业及其细分行业的全要素生产率。结果显示,5个细分行业全要素生产率的增长率差异较大,而且整个高技术产业的全要素生产率的增长率不稳定,主要原因是技术进步因素发生波动。     

数字技术赋能服务业生产率：理论机制与经验证据

本文基于理论模型阐释数字技术对服务业生产率的影响,分析高技能劳动力与市场化水平对二者关系的调节效应,并从数字产业的发展与数字技术的应用等维度构建指标体系,测算2011—2019年中国30个省份的数字技术水平,实证检验数字技术对服务业生产率的影响与异质性冲击。结果表明：（1）数字技术对服务业生产率有显著的赋能效应;（2）数字技术对服务业生产率的赋能效应在中西部地区更加凸显,在东部地区暂未显现;（3）数字技术对服务业生产率的影响更加偏向于批发和零售业,交通运输、仓储和邮政业,金融业,房地产业等数据要素投入较多的行业;（4）高技能劳动力更易适应数字技术带来的变化,能够强化数字技术对服务业生产率的赋能;（5）市场化水平的提高能够进一步释放数字技术红利,从而显著增强数字技术对服务业生产率的积极影响。     

Is population scale a worthless surrogate for business agglomeration economies?

Carlino argues that population scale has a negative effect on productivity because it is a diseconomy rather than an economy of agglomeration. This study arrives at different conclusions. After critiquing Carlino's arguments, empirical cross-sectional productivity equations show that capital intensity accounts for much of the urban productivity advantage. Measures of business services, localization effects, congestion, infrastructure, and labor quality are then included in the equations. These variables generally have the expected effect on productivity and are frequently significant. Nevertheless, population scale continues to have a positive effect in five industries; it develops a negative effect in only one.     

Impact of Green Innovation on Labor Productivity and its Determinants: an Analysis of the Korean Manufacturing Industry

Due to worsening environmental conditions around the globe, firms have been investing a great deal of money in green technologies as a way of coping with the environmental crisis. This paper uses a unique data set based on the Korea Innovation Survey to examine the impact of green innovation on labor productivity, and the determinants of environmental activities in 2010. The empirical results show that green innovation intended for both firm and customer benefits has a positive effect on labor productivity. This finding means that firms need to implement firm‐oriented green innovation as well as customer‐oriented green innovation in order to increase their performance. Our findings also show that there are significant differences in aggregate green innovations depending on different firm sizes and industries. Specifically, large firms implement environmental activities more than small ones, and pollution‐intensive industries tend to invest more in activities related to environmental technology. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Innovation and Invention in Canada

This paper compares innovation survey data with invention data as recorded by patents (and, therefore, the basis of the Yale Technology Concordance), presenting input–output tables for both data sets. We describe and compare the intersec-toral flows of technology from the industry of manufacture (IOM) to the sector of use (SOU); compare patent-to-innovation ratios by industry; and present correlations between innovation, invention and R&D by industy. One significant conclusion is that, while innovation and invention data are highly correlated in the IOM, they diverge on the SOU, especially in certain key industries that we identify.     

Frontier Technology,Absorptive Capacity and Distance*

Recent literature on international technology diffusion has demonstrated the positive effect in foreign country productivity on the domestic economy. Using a sample of Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) manufacturing industries we search for evidence that the effect of this foreign technology varies according to the level of absorptive capacity and physical distance. We find evidence that both help to explain differences in the level of productivity across countries, but that absorptive capacity is quantitatively more important. Physical distance had a greater effect at the start of the time period and in industries in which trade is local and technology is high‐tech.     

Bribery and inspection technology

The e-government movement advocates increased use of technology to improve government efficiency and reduce corruption by reducing the discretionary power of government officials. This paper studies the relationship between improvements in inspection technology within a Principal-Supervisor-Agent model, where the supervisor is an inspector who is hired by the principal to investigate the agent’s potentially illegal actions. We show that when technology increases the marginal or total productivity of the supervisor’s effort, improvements in inspection technology encourage some types of bribery. Although such technological improvements induce an equilibrium with bribery, compliance and social welfare can still rise. However, when technology and supervisory effort are sufficiently substitutable, improvements in technology may reduce compliance when bribery occurs in equilibrium even when those same technological improvements would have raised compliance in the absence of bribery. We also characterize the relationship between the principal’s socially optimal technology and the anti-corruption policy available to the principal and find that the socially optimal inspection technology may be a substitute for or a complement to the anti-corruption policy. Finally, we show that for any set of policies that optimally induces a no-bribe equilibrium, there exists another set of policies that induces an equilibrium with bribery that is pareto superior to it.     

The Competitiveness of UK Manufacturing: Performance and Prospects

The competitiveness of UK manufacturing and its future prospects are examined in terms of productivity, the performance of high technology industries and the relationship between science and technology. Die main findings are that concentrating on productivity performance can be misleading and attention should also be paid to the structural aspects of competitiveness, especially the relationship between the science base arid industrial technology. On this basis we conclude that if the UK is to realise fully the competitive potential of technological change, differences in these structural aspects of competitiveness need to be addressed.     

A cost efficiency analysis of the insurance industry in Mexico

In Mexico, the low participation of insurance activity in national production, in contrast to similar Latin American economies, is a concern. Industry’s regulator promoted more intense competition at the dawn of the century. Was deregulation followed by improvements in the financial and economic performance of Mexican insurance firms? The purpose of this paper is to answer this question through a comprehensive analysis of cost variations in an intertemporal manner, by breaking them down into the economic sources that produce them, including productivity. Cost frontier estimation was grounded in a joint production technology of desirable and undesirable outputs, modeled in an input-oriented fashion. Our results demonstrate that even though some companies achieved cost reductions from technological progress or improvements in efficiency, the Mexican insurance market does not show signs of significant productivity gains.     

Korean And Taiwanese Productivity Performance: Comparisons at Matched Manufacturing Levels

We compare the productivity performances of 15 matched manufacturing sectors in Korea and Taiwan, using the Malmquist productivity indexes, based on category-wise meta frontiers, 1978–1996. Comparisons at the sector levels are made using sequential multiplicative products of the indexes. The overall productivity and technology growth rates of Taiwan were higher than those of Korea. However, at disaggregated levels, the productivity and technology growth rates of the high-tech industries of Korea were much larger than those of Taiwan, while Taiwans high overall growth rate rested mainly on its traditional and basic industries. The leading innovators of both countries are also discussed.JEL Classification: C43, D24, L16, O11, O47, O53     

Technology Flows Between Industries: Identification and Productivity Effects

This paper investigates whether the Yale Technology Concordance (YTC) succeeds in identzbing technology flows between sectors. As a test, total factor productivity (TFP)-R&D regressions based on the YTC matrix are compared with regressions using technology flow data constructed fram input–output matrices and randomly created interindusty linkages. Because results based on the YTC do not dzffer markedly from the other estimates, one cannot easily infer @om the empirical evidence whether the YTC matrix appropriately captures interindusty technology flows or not.