Explaining cyclical movements in employment: Creative-destruction or changes in utilization?

An important step in understanding why employment fluctuates cyclically is determining the relative importance of cyclical movements in permanent and temporary plant-level employment changes. If movements in permanent employment changes are important, then recessions are times when the destruction of job-specific capital picks up and/or investment in new job capital slows. If movements in temporary employment changes are important, then employment fluctuations are related to the temporary movement of workers across activities (e.g. from work to home production or search and back again) as the relative costs/benefits of these activities change. I estimate that in the manufacturing sector temporary employment changes account for nearly 60% of the change in employment growth over the cycle. However, if permanent employment changes create and destroy more capital than temporary employment changes, then their economic consequences would be relatively greater. The correlation between gross permanent employment changes and capital intensity across industries supports the hypothesis that permanent employment changes do create and destroy more capital than temporary employment changes.     

Investment incentives and the demand for labor in U.S. regions

Most studies of federal investment incentives are limited to those policies' effects on capital formation. This paper departs from this tradition by examining the employment consequences, in general, and by industry and metropolitan area. In particular, it asks whether the accelerated depreciation allowance and investment tax credit: (1) generally displace more jobs (via the substitution effect) than they create (via the scale effect), (2) affect the overall employment situation in some metropolitan areas more than in others, and (3) help reallocate jobs across industries and metropolitan areas. Using data from Los Angeles and Philadelphia in two production models, the paper concludes that each of these outcomes is likely, though (2) depends on metropolitan areas' particular mixes of industries.     

Public infrastructure,input efficiency and productivity growth in the Canadian food processing industry

Canadian food processing is an important manufacturing industry, accounting for 13 percent of shipments. By its nature food processing depends on infrastructure capital. Our objective is to estimate infrastructure’s effects on input requirements, cost and productivity. The increase in capital and decrease in materials were respectively 2.5 and 3 times greater than the −0.07 infrastructure elasticity of labor. Infrastructure investment was cost-reducing by inducing reductions in employment and intermediate inputs. A 1 percent increase caused cost to decline by 0.16 percent. Infrastructure capital was a major contributor to productivity, annually contributing 0.5 percentage points. This was nearly double TFP growth.      

人力资本投资的资产专用性问题及其防范机制研究

专用性人力资本投资所具有的不完全契约性及资产专用性等特征必然导致了投资双方的激励缺乏问题。文章通过构建专用性人力资本投资的“囚徒困境”模型说明了该现状，并在此模型基础上从不完全信息下的静态博弈到动态博弈再到无限次合作博弈构建了专用性人力资本投资的决策模型。通过对决策模型的分析，文章找出了防范机制的三个关键点，即：稳定的雇佣关系、充分的授权激励以及充分的流动机制。     

THE DETERMINANTS OF CAPITAL INTENSITY IN FOREIGN-OWNED MANUFACTURING ACROSS U.S. REGIONS

This paper empirically tests hypothesized influences on the capital intensity of foreign direct investment (FDI) among the 48 contiguous United States. A theoretical profit maximizing model of the firm is developed linking capital intensity to traditional variables (the prices of labor and capital services); the model also takes account of the price of energy, agglomeration effects, educational levels, the importance of labor unions, and state and local public capital. The main focus is on the effects of public capital on the capital intensity of FDI. Public capital is disaggregated as follows: highway, sewer and water, and other (primarily buildings). The operational model defines FDI as the 1986 gross value of property, plant, and equipment of manufacturing affiliates of firms with headquarters in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Findings are reported both for total manufacturing and for manufacturing disaggregated into five industry groups. Generally, the results emphasize that highway infrastructure and sewer and water public capital act as powerful incentives to attract capital-intensive FDI across the 48 contiguous United States.     

The impacts of the tourism sector on the eco-efficiency of the Latin American and Caribbean countries

The impacts of the tourism sector on the overall eco-efficiency of 22 Latin America and Caribbean countries from 1995 to 2016 were examined. A Data Envelopment Analysis was used to calculate the overall eco-efficiency of each country (considering the CO₂ emissions as the input and the GDP as the output). Posteriorly, a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag model was applied to analyse the impacts of tourism arrivals, tourism capital investment, and direct tourism contribution to employment on eco-efficiency. The results indicated that tourism arrivals decrease these countries eco-efficiency, both in the short- and long-run. Contrariwise, tourism capital investment and direct tourism contribution to employment seem to promote eco-efficiency in the long-run. These findings recommend that policymakers should respect these destinations carrying capacity and, simultaneously, encourage investments in sustainable tourism projects and productive employment to all.     

Time to build capital: Revisiting investment-cash-flow sensitivities

A large body of empirical work has established the significance of cash flow in explaining investment dynamics. This finding is further taken as evidence of capital market imperfections. We show, using a perfect capital markets model, that time-to-build for capital projects creates an investment-cash-flow sensitivity as found in empirical studies that may not be indicative of capital market frictions. The result is due to mis-specification present in empirical investment-q equations under time-to-build investment. In addition, time aggregation error can give rise to cash-flow effects independently of the time-to-build effect. Importantly, both errors arise independently of potential measurement error in q. Evidence from a large panel of U.K. manufacturing firms confirms the validity of the time-to-build investment channel.     

Dismantled Spatial Fixes in the Aftermath of Recession: Capital Switching and Labour Underutilization in the Greek Capital Metropolitan Region

The article offers a fresh, empirically grounded look at the spatialities of crisis‐triggered employment forms—a largely overlooked issue in contemporary critical geography literature. Specifically, it discusses the interconnection between investment flows from manufacturing to the built environment (capital switching) and underemployment in urban metropolitan regions to substantiate its impact on emerging spatial fixities. The article, which is based on an empirical analysis informed by a radical political economy, investigates changing fixed capital formations in Greece over an extended period prior to and during the recession, from 1995 to 2012. It traces the evolution of part‐time waged work in the capital metropolitan region of Attica (Athens) vis‐à‐vis the rest of the country's regional labour markets, focusing on the polarized 2005–2012 period and the demise of the construction industry. The article highlights that ‘disrupted’ capital switching that occurred in Greece, closely associated with recalibrated sectoral priorities and institutional interventions, resulted in the uneven sprawling of underemployment. Our findings offer insight into how the dismantling of spatial fixes within core metropolitan regions of the southern European Union (and beyond) are connected to labour surplus and successive slumps in manufacturing and construction. The article closes by calling for new theorizations of contemporary urban regional unevenness and its spatiotemporal fixities, which account for the role of changes in labour turnover time.     

How do employment relationships enhance firm innovation? The role of human and social capital

Aiming to explore the effect of human resource management on innovation, this study examined how employment relationships (ER), human capital and social capital work together in influencing innovation in a sample of Spanish firms. We defined an indirect effects model in which both human and social capital mediate between ERs and innovation. We also expected that social capital would enhance human capital. Tests on a sample of 160 innovative Spanish firms confirmed that ERs are not directly associated with innovation. Nevertheless, there is an indirect effect of the mutual investment employment model on innovation through human and social capital. Finally, we observed a positive effect of social capital on human capital.     

Agricultural productivity growth and the development of manufacturing in developing Asia

In this paper, it is argued that agricultural productivity is an important determinant of the extent of manufacturing development. Specifically, it was hypothesized that agricultural productivity played a significant role in influencing the share of employment in the manufacturing sector as a proportion of total employment. This hypothesis was tested empirically utilizing data from eleven Asian countries over a thirty-five-year period. The results support the hypothesis. In addition, the results show that human capital accumulation has also played an important role in positively influencing the share of manufacturing employment in total employment for the countries in the sample.     

绩效评估中的模型选择:问题与解决方法——基于就业培训项目的研究

对就业支出进行绩效评估,是梳理优化就业政策、科学分配就业支出和监管强化的重要手段。本文借鉴国际经验,构建了符合我国国情的就业培训项目绩效评估方法。该方法在Rubin因果模型分析框架下,以人力资本投资和微观计量经济学理论为基础,克服了绩效评估中的自选择问题,并可实务操作。本文利用该方法对我国部分地区的就业培训项目绩效进行评估,并提出就业和就业支出分配的优化政策建议。     

Spatio-temporal determinants of the structural and productive transformation of regions in Central and East European countries

This paper investigates the determinants of the structural (between-sectoral) and productive (within-sectoral) transformation of 56 NUTS2 regions in Central and East European (CEE) countries over the 2008–2014 period. Over the analysed period, a transformation of the analysed regions has taken place towards the tertiary sector and high value-added activities. The results from a spatial panel Durbin analysis reveal the existence of product-space linkages and point to a productive transformation towards high technology-intensive activities as an important driver of industrial development. Equal access to digital infrastructure in urban and rural areas and transfer of skills, knowledge and resources through the inflow of foreign investment and imports of production inputs increase the contribution of manufacturing to regional employment. The effect of profit tax reductions on the share of manufacturing employment is about five times larger than the effect of government subsidies to production.     

The economic performance of cities: A Markov-switching approach

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is, therefore, the weighted average of the high-phase and low-phase growth rates, with the weight being the frequency of the two phases. We estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high-phase and low-phase growth rates. Growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix, while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only, specifically, the relative importance of manufacturing. Overall, our results strongly reject the notion that city-level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle.     

How do technological innovations affect corporate investment and hiring?

In this paper, we study the relation between technological advancement, and corporate investment and hiring. We build a corporate investment model with dynamic technology conditions, and we find the optimal investment and labor inputs increase in response to technological innovation shocks. Consistent with the model predictions, we empirically show that corporate investment and hiring increase following technological advancements, using various measures of technological innovation. Further, we find the effect is stronger for firms in more innovative industry, firms with higher capital intensity and firms with higher market-to-book ratio. Our findings provide evidence for the endogenous growth theory, i.e., firms with successful innovations tend to expand in capital investment and employment, suggesting technological innovations are, to some extent, Hicks-neutral.     

政府补贴促进制造业企业研发投入了吗?——基于资本结构的门槛效应研究

本文以2016~2018年沪深股市的制造业上市公司为研究样本,通过建立门槛效应模型,验证了政府补贴与企业研发投入的作用关系会随着资本结构的变化而变化。研究发现,政府补贴能够促进企业研发投入,并且在资本结构的调节作用下呈现三重门槛效应。进一步研究还发现,政府补贴对非国有企业研发投入的影响系数更高。因此,政府研发补贴政策需要综合考虑企业资金状况、企业性质,建立有效甄别机制,实施差异化补贴策略,加大对非国企补贴力度,拓宽中小企业融资渠道。     

Productivity and Growth in UK Industries: An Intangible Investment Approach*

This article calculates some facts for the ‘knowledge economy’. Using new data, first we document UK intangible investment and find that (i) this is greater than tangible investment by £37bn in 2008; (ii) R&D is 11% of total intangible investment, software 15%, and training and organizational capital 22% each; (iii) the most intangible‐intensive industries are manufacturing and financial services. Next, we measure the contribution of intangible capital to growth for 2000–08. We find that intangible capital accounts for 23% of labour productivity growth and treating intangibles as investment lowers total factor productivity growth in the 2000s by 24% (R&D lowers it by 3%).     

Intra-urban location of manufacturing employment in Colombia

This paper describes the spatial distribution of manufacturing employment in Bogota and analyzes the changes in the location patterns over the 1970–1975 period using industrial directory data. The analysis shows strong evidence of the spatial decentralization of manufacturing employment owing to a steady movement of firms outward from central areas; new large firms with more than 100 employees tend to locate near the periphery while the births of small firms tend to take place near the center. Measures of concentration indicate an increasing dispersion of manufacturing establishments during the period.     

The economic performance of cities: A Markov-switching approach

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is, therefore, the weighted average of the high-phase and low-phase growth rates, with the weight being the frequency of the two phases. We estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high-phase and low-phase growth rates. Growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix, while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only, specifically, the relative importance of manufacturing. Overall, our results strongly reject the notion that city-level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle.     

Technology Choice:

ABSTRACT Suppose, unlike the endogenous growth literature, that technological innovation may actually create structural problems. If capital and labor inputs of specific skill levels are complementary, and new technology changes the skill mix needs, then this mismatch may create underemployment or unemployment. High-tech investment maximizes output but at the expense of unemployment of unskilled workers; lower-tech investment results in smaller unskilled labor unemployment, but a smaller increase in output (or underemployment of skilled labor). A policy solution for this tradeoff is to allocate investment between physical capital and human capital in the right proportions to ensure both maximum output and full employment.     

Comparisons of agricultural productivity growth in China and India

We measure and compare agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components (efficiency and technical change) in China and India and test the TFP series for the existence of structural breaks relating the evolution of TFP to policy milestones. Our results show that agricultural TFP growth accelerates in China after 1979 and in India after 1974, although China’s agricultural sector clearly outperforms India’s. The main explanation of these differentials is that agricultural growth in China benefited from more fundamental institutional and policy reforms in agriculture than India. There is some evidence that the transformation of industry in China was also important for agricultural TFP growth. Manufacture growth absorbed labor and reduced employment in agriculture, creating incentives for capital investment and technical change that kept output per worker in agriculture growing at high rates. Fewer changes in agricultural policies and in the dynamics of manufacturing in India resulted in slower growth in agricultural productivity, despite policy changes that accelerated economic growth in recent years.