Unemployment and Economic Integration for Developing Countries

While financial or trade integration between countries may increase the size of the market and aid the adoption of more advanced technologies, will it also increase the level of urban unemployment for a developing country? In this model, there is unemployment in the urban sector. Manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Financial firms provide capital to manufacturing firms and they also engage in oligopolistic competition. We show that an increase in the wage rate in the manufacturing sector changes neither the level of technology nor the level of employment in the manufacturing sector. While financial or trade integration between developing countries leads manufacturing firms to adopt more advanced technologies, the level and rate of employment in the manufacturing sector will not deteriorate.     

The Choice of Technology and Rural-Urban Migration in Economic Development

This paper studies a general equilibrium model of rural-urban migration in which manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Urban residents incur commuting costs to work in the Central Business District. Surprisingly a change in the size of the population or an increase in the exogenously given wage rate will not affect a manufacturing firm’s choice of technology. This helps to explain why firms in developing countries may not adopt labor intensive technologies even under abundant labor supply. An increase in the number of manufacturing firms increases both the employment rate and the level of employment in the manufacturing sector. However, manufacturing firms choose less advanced technologies. Capital accumulation leads manufacturing firms to choose more advanced technologies, but may not increase employment in the manufacturing sector.     

A Dynamic Model of the Choice of Technology in Economic Development

In this overlapping-generations model, there is unemployment in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose technologies to maximize profits. With capital as a fixed cost of production, increasing returns in the manufacturing sector exist. In the unique steady state, first, when individuals become more patient, the savings rate increases while the level of an individual’s income decreases. Second, an increase in population or percentage of income spent on manufactured goods does not change steady-state technology while the level of an individual’s income decreases. Third, an increase in the wage rate leads manufacturing firms to choose more advanced technologies and the steady-state capital stock increases. Finally, an increase in the level of subsidies to technology adoption does not change steady-state technology.     

The choice of technology in economic development

The impact of capital accumulation on job creation is an important and interesting issue in economic development. This model provides a general-equilibrium framework for studying technology choice with unemployment in a developing economy based on micro-foundations. Unemployment in the urban sector results from the existence of efficiency wages. Manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose technologies to maximise profits. A more advanced technology uses more capital and less labour. In the steady state, an increase in the amount of capital induces firms to choose more advanced technologies and the wage rate increases. While a higher capital stock always induces firms to choose more advanced technologies, urban unemployment rate may decrease and agricultural sector employment may increase.     

Impact of international trade under dual labor markets

A country's unemployment rate can be affected by technology choice and the opening of international trade. This general equilibrium model examines the impact of international trade with the presence of dual labor markets in which manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose technologies with different marginal and fixed costs to maximize profits. In a closed economy, it is shown that an increase in labor market efficiency or a population increase induces manufacturing firms to adopt more advanced technologies and the wage rate in the manufacturing sector increases. With the existence of a continuum of technologies, technology choice is not a source of firm heterogeneity. The opening of international trade leads to an increase in the wage rate in the manufacturing sector and the price of the agricultural good. When countries are identical, international trade always increases national welfare.     

ICT and global sourcing – evidence for German manufacturing and service firms

This paper analyses the relevance of information and communication technologies (ICT) for firms’ probability of global sourcing of inputs. Using firm-level data from Germany in 2009, which include mainly small and medium-sized firms, the empirical analysis differentiates between manufacturing and service firms. The results show some differences between the manufacturing and service sector. Controlling for various sources of firm heterogeneity, the global sourcing probability is increasing in the firms’ share of employees with Internet access in the manufacturing sector. E-commerce-intensive firms are more likely to source inputs from abroad but generally, this relationship between e-commerce and global sourcing is only robust in services and much stronger there than in manufacturing. In both sectors, it is strongest in industries with higher upstream industry diversity. Moreover, labour productivity is positively linked to global sourcing. The findings support arguments for the importance of the Internet for global trade.     

Determinants and impacts of subcontracting: evidence from India’s unorganized manufacturing sector

There are two divergent perspectives on the impact of subcontracting on firms in the informal sector. According to the benign view, formal sector firms prefer linkages with relatively modern firms in the informal sector, and subcontracting enables capital accumulation and technological improvement in the latter. According to the exploitation view, formal sector firms extract surplus from stagnant, asset-poor informal sector firms that use cheap family labour in home-based production. However, direct, firm-level evidence on the determinants and impact of subcontracting is thus far lacking in the literature. We apply a modified Heckman selection model to Indian National Sample Survey data on informal manufacturing enterprises (2005–2006). We find that home-based, relatively asset-poor, and female-owned firms are more likely to be in a subcontracting relationship. Further, we perform selectivity-corrected Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition and calculate treatment effects to show that subcontracting benefits smaller firms, firms in industrially backward states and rural firms; it is harmful for larger firms, firms in industrially advanced states, and urban firms. Our results suggest that the effects of subcontracting are more complex than those predicted by the divergent perspectives. Policy-makers need to engage with this complexity.     

An alternative approach to the monitoring of technological diffusion via foreign direct investment: evidence from the Greek manufacturing sector

The existing studies of foreign direct investment and the corresponding technological diffusion process that they generate, focus either on specific parameters of the production process in isolation, or they combine certain parameters to construct indices that are not consistent across studies. The present analysis proposes an alternative approach that captures the entire production process and multinational firms are viewed as the platform that transfers more advanced technologies to the host countries. As multinational firms are able to utilise more efficiently the available production process, an efficiency gap ensues between the domestically owned firms of a country and the multinational firms that operate in it. We capture and provide a measure and a monitoring mechanism of the technological diffusion process via foreign direct investment through the evolution of the efficiency gap between the two groups of firms whilst controlling for other variables that might contribute to such a gap. We apply our approach to the manufacturing sector of the Greek economy that experiences a consistent presence of foreign direct investment inflows over the time period 2001–2007.     

The cost of capital,finance and high‐tech investment

Investment is the most volatile component of aggregate demand and it is often considered central to business cycles fluctuations. The responsiveness of business investment to changes in its price is thus crucial to our understanding of economic activity. In spite of the key role played by the user cost of capital in economic analysis, there is little empirical support for the existence of substantial user cost elasticity. However, most of the evidence to date is based on aggregate user cost data, which may have introduced downward biases in the estimated user cost. This paper contributes to the literature by constructing a disaggregated, industry‐specific micro user cost variable and focusing on a special class of firms – the high‐tech firms. To provide a benchmark for the results, the user cost estimates for the high‐tech sector are compared with those for the rest of the manufacturing sector. The results suggest that there is little response of investment to variations in its user cost. The findings also suggest that high‐tech firms’ investment behavior is not, after all, that different from the rest of the manufacturing sector.     

Trade liberalization,firm entry,and income inequality

This paper examines the short‐ and long‐run effects of trade liberalization via tariff reductions on income inequality in an economy, which is characterized by an imperfectly competitive urban manufacturing sector and a perfectly competitive rural agricultural sector. Tariff reductions reduce domestic output in the importable urban manufacturing sector, leading to shifts of capital from the urban sector to the rural agricultural sector. This can narrow the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor in the short run. However, the lowered capital cost attracts new firms, and subsequently excessive entry of firms, to the urban manufacturing sector. This firm entry effect can mitigate the favorable effect of tariff reductions on wage inequality in the long run. Empirical study confirms the findings.     

Building Technological Capabilities In A Liberalising Developing Economy: Firm Strategies And Public Policy

As a consequence of economic reforms, the Indian manufacturing sector faces a variety of technology related challenges. It not only has to quickly develop world-class manufacturing capabilities, but also gear up to develop new products and processes. In this paper we analyse the technology strategies of six Indian firms in different product groups which are trying to build competitive manufacturing and technology capabilities. The linkages between corporate, technology, and manufacturing strategies are explored and the role of complementary assets is studied in order to identify patterns through which these firms are building capabilities of various kinds. Specifically, we evaluate the extent to which firms use supply chains to develop product and process technologies. Some links between public policy and firm level technological capabilities are also explored to identify a few key priorities in the current context     

The impact of foreign direct investment on UK manufacturing: is there a profit squeeze in domestic firms?

This paper examines the extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) in selected UK manufacturing sectors has an impact on reported profits in domestic firms. Foreign manufacturing firms are characterized by relatively high labour productivity and low wage shares. Entry by foreign firms not only impacts on domestic market shares, but also on domestic cost conditions. As a result, profitability in the indigenous sector may be reduced. There are a number of policy implications of this analysis which are explored.     

Agricultural Biotechnology in the European Union: Alternative Technologies and Economic Outcomes

All seed firms in six EU countries were surveyed in May 1999 to determine how seed development budgets were distributed across three crop development technologies and the effects of the type of technology in use on employment, sales and exports. The results indicate that an evaluation of the economic consequences of an emergent technology such as genetic engineering should both consider the effect of competitive alternative technologies and survey all firms within the sector, rather than focusing on a subset of high technology firms. Only about 10% of the combined 1999 research budget of European seed firms was spent on genetic engineering, although this should increase to about 15% by 2002. Alternative technologies to develop new plant varieties, such as conventional plant breeding and conventional breeding combined with techniques that were developed for genetic engineering, are considerably more important economically. In fact, there is no difference in expected employment and sales per development employee by the type of technology in use, while export rates are highest among firms that combine conventional plant breeding with advanced techniques.     

房价水平、交通成本与产业区位分布关系再考量

中心城市房价水平或地租水平的提高具有客观性。房价水平和交通成本变动对制造业区位分布影响较大,而对于生产性服务业的影响并不显著。占用土地面积较大的制造业向外转移不仅有可能抵消房价上涨的压力,而且为具有更高附加值的生产性服务业的发展创造条件。房价水平上涨和交通成本提高加快中心城市制造业的扩散以及生产性服务业的集聚,客观上促使城市间由专业化分工向功能分工结构转变,推动中心城市实现产业升级,有利于形成合理的区域分工格局。     

Revolution in three-quarter time: Lessons from the diffusion of advanced manufacturing technologies

This paper reviews the rates of diffusions in advanced industrialized countries of a selection of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) including computer-aided design, robotics and flexible manufacturing systems. It examines the trends developing in the use of these technologies and evidence that different 'models' of practice can be observed between Japan, the USA and Europe. The paper discusses the principal factors influencing the diffusion of AMT's and the range of benefits perceived by the firms through their use. Despite their rapid diffusion, there is concern that the expected benefits from invstment in AMTs is rarely achieved. The paper suggests that the problem of achieving full benefits from these technologies is related to the extent of integration of technologies achieved, which requires a significant degree of organizational learning and development by firms.     

DYNAMICS OF PRODUCTIVITY AND COST OF LABOUR IN ITALIAN MANUFACTURING FIRMS

This paper studies the impact of size on labour cost and productivity for Italian manufacturing firms. The distributions of both labour cost and productivity display a wide support, even when disaggregated by sector of industrial activity. Further, both labour cost and productivity, when considered alone, are growing with the size of the firm. We investigate this relationship on a new set of data and we are able to show that once productivity differences among firms have been accounted for, size still retains a positive effect on cost of labour in most of the sectors considered.     

Agricultural Biotechnology in the European Union: Alternative Technologies and Economic Outcomes

All seed firms in six EU countries were surveyed in May 1999 to determine how seed development budgets were distributed across three crop development technologies and the effects of the type of technology in use on employment, sales and exports. The results indicate that an evaluation of the economic consequences of an emergent technology such as genetic engineering should both consider the effect of competitive alternative technologies and survey all firms within the sector, rather than focusing on a subset of high technology firms. Only about 10% of the combined 1999 research budget of European seed firms was spent on genetic engineering, although this should increase to about 15% by 2002. Alternative technologies to develop new plant varieties, such as conventional plant breeding and conventional breeding combined with techniques that were developed for genetic engineering, are considerably more important economically. In fact, there is no difference in expected employment and sales per development employee by the type of technology in use, while export rates are highest among firms that combine conventional plant breeding with advanced techniques.     

Does FDI in manufacturing cause FDI in business services? Evidence from French firm‐level data

Abstract .  This paper uses a large French firm-level data set to evaluate the determinants of location choices in services. In a first step, estimates for four broad services sectors are compared with the estimates for the manufacturing sector. Using a discrete choice model, we find that this framework does fairly well in explaining location choices in services and that the parameter estimates for services are close to the ones for manufacturing. We then investigate whether the similarity in estimated parameters is due to a complementarity between location choices in manufacturing and in services, in the sense that manufacturing location choices may cause the location of services. A particularly appropriate services sector, for this purpose is the business services sector, for which input-output linkages with the manufacturing sector are particularly strong. It is found that the downstream demand of French manufacturing firms has a positive effect on the location choice probabilities of French business services firms. This effect is robust.     

Technology Adoption,Export Status,and Skill Upgrading: Theory and Evidence

This paper develops a model of trade that features heterogeneous firms, technology choice and different types of skilled labor in a general equilibrium framework to explain within‐industry increase in the relative demand for skilled workers. Its main contribution is to investigate the impact of firms' export and technology choice decisions on skill upgrading. Only firms in the upper range of the productivity distribution produce for the foreign market using high‐technology. Since this technology is skilled‐biased, exporters that resort to modern technologies are more skill intensive. Empirical evidence is also provided to support the model's main predictions using plant‐level panel data from Chile's manufacturing sector (1990–1999).     

Assessing the Impact of Formal and Informal Regulations on Environmental and Economic Performance of Brazilian Manufacturing Firms

This study investigates the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of Brazilian manufacturing firms. We adopt a dual approach where production technology is represented by a cost function, approximated by a translog form. Pollution is considered as a negative by-product that can be modified trough using either formal regulation (inspections or sanctions) or informal regulation (community pressure). A simultaneous equation model is estimated by three-stage least squares on a sample of 404 industrial establishments located in the state of S?o Paulo, Brazil. We show that pollution abatement costs for the Brazilian manufacturing sector are different from zero which suggests that pollution emissions are affected by environmental regulation. We also demonstrate that environmental performance of firms is jointly affected by formal and informal regulation. Lastly, formal regulation is largely influenced by informal regulation and more specifically by community pressure.