Culture and labour productivity: An empirical investigation

Culture is considered as one of the most powerful forces that shape human behaviour and thereby economic activity. This paper investigates the effects of culture on labour productivity and examines the cultural traits driving this relationship. Using panel data analysis, empirical evidence is provided covering a sample of 34 OECD countries over a wide period of three decades. Our empirical results suggest a significant positive relationship between the cultural background and labour productivity. The main channels of this positive impact are control and work ethic environment, while obedience has a negative impact on productivity. These findings are robust to a series of robustness checks, including alternative cultural measures, additional control variables, various country samples, and alternative specifications.     

A theory of racial diversity, segregation, and productivity

Empirical evidence illustrates that diversity generates both economic costs and benefits. This paper develops a theoretical model that accounts for the positive and deleterious effects of heterogeneity. First, an expanded Solow Growth Model demonstrates that the direct effects of diversity can be positive or negative, and depend upon the size of fixed parameter values. Second, diversity also influences individuals' location decisions. Segregation (variation of diversity across regions) always reduces national output per worker, so if diversity induces integration, it indirectly augments productivity as well. Finally, political policies aimed at reducing interaction costs across groups may actually reduce aggregate output per worker by encouraging segregation.     

Keynes's Z function, heterogeneous output and marginal productivity

Keynes was adamant that the assumption of homogeneous outputand capital in macroeconomic theory is inadmissable. His aggregatesupply or Z function is a generalisation of Marshall's ordinarysupply function to take account of heterogeneous output, andis an essential element of the principle of effective demand.The ‘linear Z curve’ controversy can be attributedto Keynes's desire to demonstrate how his general monetary theoryof value and output encompasses the special case of Classicaltheory, including the marginal productivity theorem. The infamoussecond footnote on pages 55–6 of The General Theory canthereby be fully resolved.     

The stability of the production function and the marginal productivity of inputs: An empirical study

This paper tests for the stability of the aggregate production function of the United States from 1929 to 67 with two inputs (labor and capital) and with three inputs (labor, capital, and real balances). The results show parametric instability regardless of the inclusion of real balances. Using the varying parameters estimation method allowing for permanent and transitory shifts in the parameters, time-series estimates of the marginal productivity of capital, labor, and real balances are derived for the period 1929–1967. The temporal behavior of the marginal productivity of real balances is briefly analyzed.     

Generation and distribution of the total factor productivity gains in US industries

This study estimates productivity gains and their distribution among inputs and outputs for 63 American industries over the period 1987–2012. Using the traditional surplus accounting method, the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth rates are divided into their price change components in order to determine the stakeholders who do or do not receive price advantages.

An initial analysis showed that TFP of US industries increased at an average trend of 0.8% and established that remunerations to employees and firms’ profitability constituted 49% and 39%, respectively, of the accumulated economic surplus from the productivity gains. Suppliers of intermediate inputs retained 12.1% of the surplus. Finally, customers, equipment and structure providers were the losers in the distribution of economic surplus via, respectively, a significant growth of relative final demand prices and a substantial price decrease of these assets.

A second step analysis underlined that industries with high TFP growth rates mainly benefited customers and firms via output price decreases and profitability improvements while industries with low or negative TFP changes hurt customers through significant output price increases. The sectoral level analysis also showed that employees’ remunerations depend only slightly on productivity gains produced within their industrial sectors.     

A new perspective on the exporter productivity premium: online trade

We use a unique firm-level data set including 9000 companies from 26 European Union countries covering four different sectors to take a close look at the relationship between online exports and productivity. The online exporter productivity premium is estimated using different techniques (ordinary least squares, quantile regressions and robust estimation). Results consistently indicate that the estimated online exporter productivity premium is statistically different from zero, positive and significant from an economic point of view. European online exporters, according to these results, are approximately 2% more productive than non-online exporters. Productivity differences between firms could be related to variables that are not included in the empirical model. More research would be needed to address this issue in the future.     

整合技术概念及对新古典就业理论的反思

笔者提出整合技术概念，即所有的工人整合在一起操作生产系统；如果任何一名工人缺失，则生产系统不能运行。如果一种技术严格具有整合技术的性质，那么在到达能使生产系统运行之前，工人的边际产品为零。如果增加一名工人生产系统就可运行，则这名工人的边际产品等于总产品。如果再增加一名工人的边际产品为零，则边际产品曲线退化为一条垂直线。新古典边际劳动生产率理论认为，厂商雇闸工人的工资等于劳动的边际产品，但这一理论显然不适合整合技术。因此，要研究在更一般条件下厂商雇用决策的机制。采用整合技术的概念可以对很多经济学的理论问题进行重新思考。     

An empirical study of firm productivity growth based on the dynamic selection model: Effects on the recent decline in Korean exports

Export and productivity growth in the Korean manufacturing sector have both been slow since 2011. To understand this relationship, we examine the productivity distributions of manufacturing firms in Korea by applying the dynamic selection model developed by Sampson (2016). The fitness of the dynamic selection model suggests that a slowdown in the market selection mechanism may be a crucial contributor to the stagnant growth in the productivity. In addition, we find that the productivity difference between exporting firms and non-exporting firms has decreased and the low productivity growth of firms exporting to non-foreign affiliates has contributed to this trend.     

Exports,productivity and innovation: new firm level empirical evidence

This article examines the determinants of Portuguese exports, applying data from 277 manufacturing firms for the period 2006–2010. In 2010, these firms accounted for about 47% of total Portugal’s exports. Both the static and dynamic results of the estimated models confirm the positive influence of productivity on variations in exports. The dynamic estimations also suggest that exports in the previous period hold a positive effect on contemporaneous exports, confirming the Roberts and Tybout (1997) sunk cost hypothesis for exports. In the dynamic analysis, the labour costs and the size of the firm do not have a statistically significant effect on Portuguese exports with the findings also pointing to increased expenditure on research and development (R&D) generating no statistically significant effect on exports. The lagged R&D expenditure was also insignificant in explaining the change of Portuguese exports. Thus, these results suggest that applying a product or process innovation measure returns better results than indirect measures such as R&D expenditure.     

An empirical test of the segmented labour market theory for the Netherlands

In this paper an orthodox segmented labour market theory (SLM theory)is tested by means of the data provided by the research project, Quality of Labour 1977 (Zanders et al., 1977). The segmented labour market theory is restricted to the dual labour market approach, although a major extension is taken into account (a primary segment consisting of two tiers). The segments are created by making use of an objectivemethod. Nine quality characteristics of jobs are taken into account. A number of logit estimations are carried out to test the competing theories of human capital and the segmented labour market. The conclusion is that although discrimination in the labour market appears to exist, the SLM theory has to be rejected.     

Wage,productivity and unemployment: microeconomics theory and macroeconomics data

We confront microeconomics theory with macroeconomics data. Unemployment results from two main micro-level decisions of workers and firms. Most of the efficiency wage and bargaining theories predict that over the business cycle, unemployment falls below its natural rate when the worker’s real wage exceeds the reservation wage. However, these theories have weak empirical support. Firm’s decision predicts that when the worker’s real wage exceeds the marginal product of labour (MPL), unemployment increases above its natural rate. Accounting for this microeconomic decision helps explain almost all the fluctuations of US unemployment.     

论提高全民的收入水平

提高全民的收入水平，是我国今后在收入分配制度方面的改革重点和目标，即实现扩大中等收入阶层的比重，提高低收入者收入水平，消灭贫困人口。为此，在收入分配理论方面要实行一系列创新和突破；实践上，中等收入者的扩大，只能或主要来自于中低收入者收入水平的提高。消灭贫困其实质是提高广大农民的收入水平问题。     

Income Polarization of the U.S. Working Class: An Institutionalist View

We provide an institutional insight into the trend of income polarization within the U.S. working class. In contrast to the previous industrial waves, the current and ongoing industrial revolution is characterized by the replacement of “creative destruction” with jobless growth. Instead of replacing the lost jobs with new ones, new disruptive technologies eliminate more jobs in traditional labor and capital-intensive sectors than create jobs in new idea-intensive sectors. By examining the relationship between the income share of the bottom 50 percent, the middle 40 percent, and the top 10 percent and technological progress, we obtain robust econometric results. According to our results, the income polarization among U.S. workers can be associated with the shift of R&D activities from the public to the corporate sector. The concentration of innovations by corporate capital limits the power of society to reduce inequality and to provide greater social stability through “the incredible productivity” of technological progress.     

Political aspects of the capital controversies and capitalist crises

The Cambridge controversies about the theory of capital were ultimately underpinned by a clash between two different visions of capitalism, the neoclassical view, according to which distribution depends on the supply and demand curves of capital and labor, and the post Keynesian view, according to which distribution depends on political and institutional factors instead. I shall argue that the distinction between “meritocratic capitalism” and “patrimonial capitalism,” which underpins the discussions surrounding Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is also connected to those two different visions of capitalism, which were behind the Cambridge controversies. These two visions of capitalism have important implications for our understanding of political power over workers, and also to our understanding of political power over land and its natural resources. The role of land and natural resources was not discussed in the Cambridge controversies, but is addressed in Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities, and is implied in Piketty’s inclusion of land in his definition of capital, which brings in a geographical dimension to our understanding of capitalism and capitalist crises, as I shall argue.     

The labour market and the distribution of earnings: an empirical analysis for Italy

Using four waves of data from the Participation Labour Unemployment Survey, a database of information on the Italian labour market supply, we address the question of earnings dispersion by applying a ‘nested’ decomposition procedure of the Theil inequality measure, which combines into a unified framework the standard decompositions by population subgroups and income sources. The empirical evidence obtained points to the key role played by the self-employees in shaping labour income inequality, especially at the upper extreme of the earnings distribution, and the emergence of non-standard forms of employment as an important feature of the contemporary workplace.     

Sources of productivity growth using the Färe-Primont decomposition. An empirical application to the Irish beef sector

Several competing methodologies for TFP estimation have been developed in the past decades. A popular approach in the literature is index number computation. The most widely implemented TFP indices face however several important limitations. For example, Fisher, Tornqvist or Malmquist TFP indices do not satisfy the transitivity test, precluding reliable direct inter-temporal comparisons. The recently developed Färe-Primont TFP index satisfies this property, and therefore it is applied to analyse the evolution of TFP in the Irish beef sector between 2010 and 2016. Moreover, this index is multiplicatively complete, allowing a consistent decomposition of TFP growth in different sources. The sample of Irish beef farms used in the analysis is clustered to account for differences in production technology in the sector. The cluster-specific TFP changes computed were found to present important differences across the seven clusters identified. Significant TFP growth was identified in five of the classes, while TFP declined for the other two. Dispersion and mobility of the TFP levels indicate a lack of structural changes in the sector regardless of the cluster considered.     

Investment climate,outward orientation and manufacturing firm productivity: new empirical evidence

Drawing on the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we revisit the link between firm-level investment climate and productive performance for a panel of enterprises surveyed twice in time in 70 developing countries and 11 manufacturing industries. We take advantage of the time dimension available for an increasing number of countries to tackle the endogeneity issue stressed in previous studies. We also use pertinent econometric techniques to address other biases inherent in the data (e.g.measurement errors, missing observations and multicollinearity). Our results reinforce previous findings by validating, with a larger than usual sample of countries and industries, the importance of a larger set of environment variables. We show that infrastructure quality, information & communication technologies, skills and experience of the labour force, cost of and access to financing, security and political stability, competition and government relation contribute to firms’ and countries’ performances gap. The empirical analysis also illustrates that firms which choose an outward orientation have higher productivity level. Nevertheless, outward oriented enterprises are more sensitive to investment climate limitations. These findings have important policy implications by showing which dimensions of the business environment, in which industry, could help manufacturing firms to be more competitive in the present context of increasing globalization.     

中国居民收入分配差距扩大的制度性因素分析

近年来,中国居民的收入差距在日益的扩大。这种扩大有多方面的原因,但是总的来说主要是市场化和非市场化这 两个方面。本文着重分析了中国居民收入分配差距扩大的制度性因素。     

Energy intake and productivity of Guatemalan sugarcane cutters: An empirical test of the efficiency wage hypothesis part I

This study represents an empirical test of the productivity consumption relation of the efficiency wage hypothesis, which is briefly discussed here. The research setting and design of the study are described. An energy supplementation program was generally effective in raising the daily energy intake and energy expenditure levels of Guatemalan sugarcane workers who were moderately energy deficient. Increased energy availability did not result in increased energy expenditure at work, or in an increased supply of work units. The results do not provide evidence of a strong productive-energy intake relationship among these workers.     

Energy intake and productivity of Guatemalan sugarcane cutters: An empirical test of the efficiency wage hypothesis part II

This paper examines additional evidence of an empirical test of the productivity-consumption relation of the efficiency wage hypothesis. A cross-sectional analysis showed sharply diminishing productivity returns to higher levels of daily energy intake of Guatemalan sugarcane cutters. No positive and consistent energy supplementation effect on the daily supply of work units could be demonstrated in a time-series analysis. Energy supplementation did not have a delayed impact on worker productivity. It is concluded that increased energy availability may not necessarily result in increased productivity of rural workers who are moderately energy deficient.