Economic and productivity growth decomposition: An application to post-reform China

This paper examines and applies the theoretical foundation of the decomposition of economic and productivity growth to the thirty provinces in China's post-reform economy. The four attributes of economic growth are input growth, adjusted scale effect, technical progress, and efficiency growth. A stochastic frontier model with a translog production and incorporated with human capital is used to estimate the growth attributes in China. The empirical results show that input growth is the major contributor to economic growth and human capital is inadequate even though it has a positive and significant effect on growth. Technical progress is the main contributor to productivity growth and the scale effect has become important in recent years. The impact of technical inefficiency is statistical insignificant in the sample period. The relevant policy implication for a sustainable post-reform China economy is the need to promote human capital accumulation and improvement in technical efficiency.     

哈萨克斯坦的油气投资环境

哈萨克斯坦位于亚洲中部,北邻俄罗斯,南与乌兹别克斯坦、土库曼斯坦、吉尔吉斯斯坦接壤,西濒里海,东接中国,总面积271.73万平方公里,人口1506万,是中亚五国中面积最大的国家.哈萨克斯坦是个多民族国家,全国共有130多个民族,哈萨克族人数最多(占53.4%),主要信奉伊斯兰教.哈萨克语为国语,俄语在国家机关和地方自治机关与哈语同为正式使用的语言.首都阿斯塔那是哈萨克斯坦的政治中心,是哈国主要的工农业生产基地,是全国铁路交通枢纽.     

尼日利亚石油天然气工业:可资合作的重要领域

众所周知,从1993年起我国已成为石油净进口国,进入21世纪后能源短缺问题日渐突出。据估计,到2010年我国石油进口量将达到1.2亿吨,对石油依存度将高达37.8%。加速实施石油资源来源多元化战略,确保我国经济增长所需的石油供应已刻不容缓。非洲石油储量增长迅速,自90年代中期以来,     

The impact of environmental regulation on productivity in German industries

The objective of this paper is to adjust a traditional total factor productivity (TFP) measure for the direct effect of environmental regulation on material and capital input. For this purpose we consider the fact that part of material input and pollution abatement capital have not been used to increase output but to cover the cost of using the environment as a factor of production. Therefore TFP growth rates are lower if part of the material input is allocated to abatement activities instead of producing output. We propose to treat compliance with environmental regulation as an unproductive input linked to the use of productive material input. Our aim is to answer and discuss two questions: How to measure the effect of environmental regulation on TFP, and does the effect matter. We examine data from 1975–1991 for ten pollution intensive German industries.We would like to thank Cornelia Oßwald for valuable research assistance. We are especially grateful to two anonymous referees for many helpful comments.     

Scale,scope, and regulation in the Texas gas transmission industry

This article describes and analyzes the Texas Railroad Commission's regulatory policies for the intrastate gas transmission industry, paying special attention to the impact of direct utility competition on scale and scope economies. Our econometric results suggest that most firms operate at substantial decreasing returns to scale, and the largest firms suffer the biggest diseconomies of scale. There are economies of scope between types of gas sales, but diseconomies of scope when a pipeline combines transportation with multiple categories of gas sales. These results suggest that the Texas Railroad Commission's liberal policies on entry and private contracting have not resulted in inefficient entry.     

The impact of process innovations on firm's productivity growth: the case of Spain

The main aim of this paper is to investigate about the effect that a measure of the process innovation performance of a firm has on its labour productivity growth. This analysis is mainly a consequence of two considerations. The first one results from a clear differentiation of the role that product and process innovations have on a firm's performance. The second one is to assume that the knowledge capital of a firm is mainly composed by its successful research. The study demonstrates that process innovation has a positive and significant effect on firm's productivity growth. Moreover, this result is robust under a wide range of alternative specifications and, in any case, the variable behaves much better than R&D intensity. Following previous research, the detected quadratic relationship between vertical product differentiation and process innovation performance leads to the existence of some firms for which there exist a trade–off between quality and productivity.     

The rise of service employment and its impact on aggregate productivity growth

This paper investigates how the employment shift from manufacturing toward service sectors affects the rate of economic growth when services play their role both in intermediate and in final demand. Our model includes as a special case both Baumol’s [Baumol, W.J., 1967. Macroeconomics of unbalanced growth: the anatomy of urban crisis. American Economic Review 57 (3), 415–426] model, in which services are produced only for final consumption, and Oulton’s [Oulton, N., 2001. Must the growth rate decline? Baumol’s unbalanced growth revisited. Oxford Economic Papers 53 (4), 605–627] model, in which services are entirely devoted to intermediate demand. We show that, given that the growth rate of productivity in the service sector is lower than that in the manufacturing sector, both the employment share in manufacturing and the rate of economic growth will decline in the long run irrespective of the size of the elasticity of substitution between labor and service input.     

The social economic impact of AIDS: Accounting for intergenerational transmission,productivity and fertility

In this paper we develop a model that aims to investigate the economic and demographic impacts of three effects of the HIV-AIDS epidemic in developing countries. The direct effect of the HIV epidemic is that it increases mortality and morbidity. The two indirect effects, resulting from the first, are the reduction in productivity of adults and the transmission of the disease to their offsprings. We allow these different effects to act either separately or together, and we investigate the marginal efficiency of health expenditures on the survival probability of individuals and demographics. The direct effect of the HIV virus is that it leads adults to increase their own health expenditure and to decrease that of their children. On the contrary, the transmission effect of the HIV virus leads parents to spend more on their children than on their own. We show that the reduction in productivity of young adults decreases health expenditures for themselves and their children. Furthermore, we find that the productivity effect dominates by large the two others. Moreover, when adults decide to have fewer children because of HIV, we show that the ratio of low to high skilled workers increases. This demographic impact impoverishes the economy in the short and medium run.     

Ownership unbundling of natural gas transmission networks: empirical evidence

The European Commission has intensively examined the mandatory separation of natural gas transmission from production and services. However, economic theory is ambiguous on the price effects of vertical separation. In this paper, we empirically analyze the effect of ownership unbundling of gas transmission networks, considered to be the strongest form of vertical separation, on the level of end-user prices. Therefore, we apply different dynamic estimators such as system GMM and the bias-corrected least-squares dummy variable estimator to an unbalanced panel consisting of 18 EU countries over 19 years, allowing us to avoid the endogeneity problem and to estimate the long-run effects of regulation. We introduce a set of regulatory indicators as market entry regulation, ownership structure, vertical separation and market structure, as well as account for structural and economic country specifics. Among the different estimators, we consistently find that ownership unbundling has no impact on natural gas end-user prices, while the more modest legal unbundling reduces them significantly. Furthermore, third-party access, market structure and privatization show significant influence, with the latter leading to higher prices.     

FDI and productivity growth: the role of inter‐industry linkages

Abstract There is a large literature on the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on productivity through inter‐industry economic linkages. This paper contributes to the literature by focusing on the developed economy of Canada. It finds that FDI generates strong effects on total factor productivity (TFP) growth through both forward and backward inter‐industry linkages, and increase in an industry's absorptive capacity raises the effects of FDI on TFP growth through forward inter‐industry linkages. For R&D intensive industries, the effects of FDI on TFP growth through inter‐industry linkages are small, but imports turn out to be an important source for TFP growth.     

The economic possibilities of natural gas conservation: Antithetical results of prorationing regulation

State prorationing regulations for natural gas production are intended to conserve resources, prevent waste, and, if necessary, protect the rights of property owners. This paper examines the effects of conservation regulations on the stock of the resource and on production costs. Results indicate rules that do not consider the nature of the physical stock and how it is recovered, as well as the heterogeneous nature of the reservoir, may result in sub-optimal production paths for individual wells. Such inefficiencies increase production costs and may in some cases, reduce the recoverable stock; results antithetical to the intended goals of the regulation.I'd like to thank Robert H. Patrick, Duncan Woodliff, and Bob Meyers for helpful discussions, Barry Douglas, Johannes Van Lierop, and participants at the 7th Annual Western Conference Advanced Workshop in Regulation and Public Utility Economics for insightful comments on a previous version of this paper, as well as two anonymous referees and the editor of the journal for helpful comments on an earlier draft. The usual caveat applies.     

The impact of rupee devaluation on productivity

Conclusion The reduction in the capital-labour output ratio gives a good indication of investment growth and of self-reliance. How quick demands are met, and how soon the products are produced depend upon the growth of productivity. Self-reliance can be brought about by encouraging private sector which knows when, where, and how to reward merit where merit is due. In order to increase net national product of the country, let us join hands and encourage methods to increase productivity by co-ordination of techniques and their use.With 5 FiguresThe author wishes to express his high appreciation to Messrs. Krishnamurthi of the Mysore Chamber of Commerce, Arya of the Bangalore Institute of Management, and Gangadhara Setty of the Mysore State Productivity Council for their warm and helpful remarks. Of course, the author is highly indebted to Micro-Macro Economic Analyst Dr. Giovanni Caravale and Agriculture Economist-Vice-Chancellor of Poona University Dr. D. R. Gadgil for their helpful suggestions. The monopoly of ideas, contained in this paper, rests with Professor Dr. Kumara Swamy.The paper shall be divided into two parts. In part I, we deal with the subject of productivity. In part II, we discuss upon the relationship between productivity and devaluation.     

入世对我国注册会计师行业的影响

加入世界贸易组织标志着中国正逐步融入经济全球化的过程,而且也将对中国社会经济生活的各个方面产生重大而深远的影响。作为贸易和投资服务的重要行业之一,注册会计师行业同样也面临着入世所带来的机遇和挑战。要应对国际国内经济环境的变化,切实发挥“经济警察”的作用,更好地参与国家的经济建设,就要求我们及早做出科学的判断,认真审视我国注册会计师行业的现状,认清与国际同业的差距所在,趋利避害,推进我国注册会计师行业健康发展。发展现状经过二十多年的建设,中国的注册会计师行业在行业监管、协会管理、机构改制等方面取得…     

Sectoral systems of environmental innovation: An application to the French automotive industry

This article seeks to show how a sectoral system approach may contribute to the analysis of the determinants of environmental innovations. By using Malerba's [F. Malerba: Sectoral systems of innovation and production, Res. Policy Vol. 102, 845-859, (2002)] concept of sectoral system of innovation and production, we develop a sectoral framework based on three building blocks: technological regimes, demand conditions and environmental and innovation policy. Within this framework, the sectoral patterns of environmental innovation result from the interplay between these three blocks. The conceptual framework is applied to the case of the French automotive industry, with a specific focus on the development of low emission vehicles. The analysis shows how technological regime and demand conditions lead to technological inertia, and so to a strong persistence of the dominant design. Finally, environmental and innovative policy are considered in an integrated way, so that we can study how they influence technological regime and demand conditions, and in the meantime how they are conditioned by these two blocks.     

The significance of structural transformation to productivity growth

This paper critically discusses the most common methodology for decomposing productivity change into inter- and intra-firm effects. It is argued that the methodology can be improved to explicitly take the role of structural transformation into account, and by so doing, a potential source of bias in the results is corrected. This requires the use of a tool from the field of theoretical evolutionary biology: Price’s equation. A review of a sample of studies that apply decomposition analyses shows that the methodology is best suited for studies of the evolution of labour productivity and the reallocation of labour. Based on Danish data for 1992–2010, it is then demonstrated how the results of decomposition analyses can be considerably improved by the explicit inclusion of levels in the selection process. In the specific analysis conducted by the current paper, economic selection among industries is included. It is found that the structural transformation of the economy has a large impact on the results of decomposition studies, not least on the magnitude of the inter-firm selection effect. Structural transformation from capital-intensive and thus high-labour-productivity manufacturing towards labour-intensive and thus low-labour-productivity services entails that the traditional methodology is biased downwards in its measure of economic selection. Finally, it is demonstrated that the length of the interval studied, while often determined by data limitations, has a significant but predictable effect on the results, and it is tentatively demonstrated that economic selection tends to be stronger in the trough of the business cycle.     

Technology, demand and distribution: a cumulative growth model with an application to the Dutch productivity growth slowdown

This paper argues that the case for real wage growth restraint,and the consequent restoration of profitability, which the mainstreamconsensus regards as a necessary condition for sustained outputand productivity growth, is based on weak foundations, becauseit neglects the negative impact of wage moderation on productivitygrowth. Using a general Keynesian growth model, which integratesa (wage-led or profit-led) demand regime and a productivityregime (incorporating the productivity-growth enhancing effectsof higher demand and higher real wages), the conditions areidentified under which real wage restraint fails to raise outputand productivity growth. The model is applied empirically tothe Netherlands (1960–2000).     

Firm growth and productivity in Belarus: New empirical evidence from the machine building industry

Using a unique dataset comprising information for (up to) 153 firms in the machine building sector in Belarus, we investigate the determinants of firm growth for an economy where state ownership of enterprises is widespread. We use panel data models based on generalizations of Gibrat’s law, total factor productivity estimates and matching methods to assess the differences in firm growth between private and state-controlled firms. Our results indicate that labor hoarding and soft budget constraints play a particularly important role in explaining differences in performance between these two groups of firms.     

Privatization's impact on private productivity: The case of Brazilian iron ore

A major motivation for the recent wave of privatizations of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was a belief that privatization would increase SOE productivity. There are now many studies showing most privatizations achieved this goal. Our theme is that the productivity gains from privatization are much more general and widespread than has typically been recognized in this literature. In assessing the productivity gains from privatization, the literature has only examined the productivity gains accruing at the privatized SOEs. But privatization may have significant impact on the private producers that often exist side-by-side SOEs. In this paper we show that this was indeed the case when Brazil privatized its SOEs in the iron ore industry. That is, after their privatization, the iron ore SOEs dramatically increased their labor productivity, but so did the private iron ore companies in the industry.     

The impact of vocational education on productivity in the United States

This paper examines the impact of vocational education on productivity in the United States. By using a cross-correlation test for directional causality, it is shown that vocational education has led to improvements in human capital that in turn increase productivity as measured by real private domestic product per worker hour in nonfarm business. The reverse is not true: that is, changes in productivity do not have a statistically identifiable impact on vocational education. Moreover, the time it takes for significant cross-correlations to appear suggests that the total effect of any vocational educational change takes at least 10 to 20 years to exhaust itself.When the manufacturing sector is studied separately, such positive results are not obtained. Only two out of seven vocational education measures appear to have a significant effect on productivity. For these two measures, the time for an identifiable impact to occur is also fairly long.