Cost structure,technological change,and productivity growth in the greek banking sector

This paper first empirically investigates the cost structure of the Greek banking sector. Secondly, it provides measures of economies (diseconomies) of scale and quantifies technical change and its sources. Finally, this paper measures total factor productivity growth and identifies its sources. Bank production is presented with two different approaches (the intermediation and the production approach) which are used to specify a translog cost function. The two different translog cost models are estimated through the full information maximum likelihood method of estimation on pooled time series and cross sectional data. The results obtained are not significantly affected by model specification. Both models indicate significant economies of scale and negative annual rates of growth in technical change and in total factor productivity.     

Financial deregulation and productivity growth in banking sector: empirical evidence from Bangladesh

This article examines the effects of regulatory reform on productivity growth in the Bangladesh banking industry. We use a unique balanced panel dataset comprising bank-level annual data from the early deregulation year (1984) to the most recent available period (2012) from major commercial banks in Bangladesh. Applying the Färe-Primont index, the paper provides estimates of productivity growth and identifies sources of total factor productivity (TFP) change. Empirical results show the sample banks have experienced positive TFP change after the financial deregulation. On average, TFP growth is higher in private banks than their public sector counterparts in the post-reform period. In addition, the decomposition analysis shows technological progress is the main driver of productivity change. Similar results are obtained by using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Thus, empirical results remain robust irrespective of the methodology used. The regression analysis finds a positive technical change in the first stage of the reform program, i.e. during the transition period, as leading banks employ advanced technology to compete with potential new entrants. The result also shows that the banking industry still remains concentrated within the state-owned banks.     

The service sector and economic growth: some cross-section evidence

It has often been claimed that a relative expansion of the service sector has a deleterious effect on economic growth. This paper uses cross-section country-level data from three decades –1960s, 1970s and 1980s – to see whether in fact this negative relation is reflected in the data. It is found that the effect is negative or positive depending on how the role of the service sector is measured, but there is a strong case that effect is in fact usually negative.     

Micro-heterogeneity and aggregate productivity development in the German manufacturing sector

A decomposition of aggregate productivity growth of German manufacturing firms that pertain to 11 different industries at a roughly two-digit level observed over the period 1981–1998 is performed. Productivity is measured by a nonparametric frontier function approach. The decompositions of productivity allow for an explanation of the aggregate outcomes by the quantification of the effect of structural change and the contributions of entering and exiting firms. Our results show that these forces drive aggregate productivity to a considerable extent. Remarkably, the large productivity improvements after the German reunification are mainly driven by structural change.

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.     

Technical change and total factor productivity growth for Swedish manufacturing and service industries

This article presents alternative specifications of the production functions of a large panel of Swedish firms for the period 1992 to 2000. The period can be characterized as a transition when long-run productivity growth in the Swedish economy improved from being among the weakest to one of the strongest within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In order to present a detailed exploration of this dramatic change, the time trend and general index models are applied to estimate Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth, rate of technical change and returns to scale. The models are extended to allow for firm specific as well as time-varying technical change. The parametric TFP measures are also compared with the nonparametric Solow residual, and several hypotheses are tested to explain the growth patterns in the Swedish economy. It is found that the improved growth rate, initially starting in large exporting manufacturing firms, after a deep economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s, spilled over to the rest of the economy, both manufacturing and services.     

对服务业"走出去"的战略思考

80年代以来,随着国际分工的益深化,国际产业结构的迅速调以及第三产业的日益发展和国际经济交流的不断扩大,国际服务易异军突起,发展速度超过了国货物贸易,并日益受到各国政府重视。据资料统计,国际服务贸易占全球贸易总额的25%,年平均长速度超过15%,远远快于货物易的增长速度。服务贸易的强劲展客观上促进了服务贸易自由化势。服务贸易的自由化,一方面将使我国服务市场进一步对外开,另一方面也为我国服务业进入际服务市场提供了机遇。传统市场上的有形商品的生产消费是相互分离的,生产者可以直接面对消费者而独立地生产产,为在适当地点与时…     

Ageing, productivity and wages in Austria: sector level evidence

In this paper we analyse the link between the age structure of the labour force and average labour productivity as well as average wage across industrial sectors. While this intermediate economic level has been under-explored up to now, we will argue that it provides valuable insights in several respects. Our analysis is based on a panel data set ranging over 6 years (2002–2007). It covers the sectors of mining, manufacturing and market oriented services in the Austrian economy. Our results exhibit a positive correlation of the share of older employees and productivity, whereas we cannot find any evidence for a significant relationship of the share of younger employees and productivity. Moreover, the estimated age-wage pattern does not hint at an over-payment of older employees.     

Demand and innovation in productivity growth

The labour productivity impact of demand and innovation is investigated in this paper combining insights from the Kaldorian and Schumpeterian traditions. After a review of studies in such traditions, a general model is proposed for explaining productivity growth in European manufacturing and service industries in the late 1990s, followed by two distinct specifications for the industries oriented toward product innovation, and for those where process innovation dominates. The empirical analysis is based on the match of the SIEPI‐CIS2 database developed at the University of Urbino and Eurostat Input–Output Tables at the industry level, for 22 manufacturing sectors and 10 services sectors. Six European countries are considered: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom. The results show that productivity growth in European industries can be explained by a combination of technology factors and demand dynamics, confirming the complementarity of technology and demand effects. On the demand side, household consumption emerges as the most pervasive component of demand, able to stimulate greater efficiency in all manufacturing and service industries. Investment also has a role, focused however on the capital goods producing industries. On the technology side, the mechanisms of productivity growth are fundamentally different in the industries oriented towards product innovation and in those dominated by process innovation. This evidence supports the view that innovation in firms and industries can be associated to two contrasting strategies, searching either for technological competitiveness, through knowledge generation, product innovation and expansion of new markets, or aiming at greater cost competitiveness, through job reductions, labour saving investment, flexibility and restructuring.     

Economic growth and sector dynamics

This paper analyzes the endogenous determination of sectors in a growing economy. It assumes that there are traditional sectors and modern sectors and economic growth is driven by rising productivity of the modern sectors. It also assumes that individuals are heterogeneous, which leads to increasing marginal opportunity costs in creating new modern sectors. We show that under these main assumptions, economic growth first increases diversification to sectors and then reduces it. We also show that for the equilibrium to be stable and well-behaved, it is required that the modern and traditional sectors should be substitutes and not complements.     

Services sector and economic growth in India

This study examines the long-run equilibrium and short-run dynamic relationship between services sector and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and between services and nonservices sectors in India. The model is estimated using the optimal single-equation and the maximum-likelihood system estimators. All the estimators consistently suggest the cointegrating relationship between services sector and GDP as well as between services and nonservices sectors. The estimates of long-run elasticity parameters are statistically significant and dimensionally consistent across the estimators. The conventional Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) and the new CUSUM and Moving Sum (MOSUM) tests suggest the stability of the equilibrium residuals and reinforce the cointegrating relationship between the model series. The error correction model provides some support for unidirectional Granger-causality from services sector to GDP. The impulse response and variance decomposition analyses instead suggest the bidirectional causality between services sector and GDP and between services and nonservices sectors. The stable growth of services sector is essentially crucial to absorb the adverse effects of exogenous weather shocks in agriculture and industry and provide resilience to the economy.     

The impact of regulation on productivity growth: An application to the transmission sector of the interstate natural gas industry

We estimate a regulated cost function to examine the contributions of technical change, scale economies, and regulatory bias to productivity growth in an eleven-year, twenty-firm panel of interstate natural gas pipeline companies. We derive the unregulated cost function from the regulated cost function to produce estimates of movements in the unconstrained production technology. We find that the regulation constraint is binding in most years and that scale economies explain 38 percent more growth in the unconstrained production space than they do in the regulation-constrained production space.We are grateful to Gary Biglaiser, David Guilkey, C. A. Knox Lovell, and Helen Tauchen for their suggestions, and to Karen Bauer, Philip Budzik, Ronald Colter, and Mary Streitwieser for their assistance in compiling the data sample. We are also grateful to the participants at the Georgia Productivity Workshop and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions.     

New technologies and productivity growth in the euro area

This paper provides an overview of the available evidence on the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) for developments in average labour productivity (ALP) growth in the euro area. The contribution of ICT to ALP growth is found to have increased both in terms of production and investment over the 1990s (up to 2001). However, there is no evidence of significant positive spillover effects from the use of ICT on ALP growth. This implies that there is no reason to believe that potential output growth in the euro area has increased significantly in recent years on account of new technologies. Comparing developments in the euro area and the United States, it appears, however, that ICT capital cannot account for much of the difference in ALP developments over the 1990s. This suggests that cyclical developments and, in particular, the structure of the economy are more important for explaining the difference in performance.First version received: March 2002/Final version received: May 2003We thank Bart van Ark, Neale Kennedy, Gerard Korteweg, Ad van Riet, Marcel Timmer, two anonymous referees and participants at the 17th Congress of the European Economic Association, Venice August 2002 for their comments. All errors and omissions remain ours, of course. We thank Erikos Velissaratos for his help in acquiring data on investment in ICT and Colin Webb for providing us with the OECD STAN database. This paper represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Central Bank, the European Commission or their staff.     

Openness,productivity and growth in the APEC economies

The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed the emergence of many Asian economies as important traders in the world. How has openness to trade and investment affected productivity and growth performance in those economies? This question is often tackled with the traditional growth regression method. However, the findings in the existing literature are still inconclusive. This paper proposes an alternative approach which is employed to examine the impact of openness on the sources of productivity and growth in the APEC economies. Specifically, the proposed technique distinguishes technological progress (innovation) from efficiency changes (catch-up) and attempts to isolate the influences of openness on these two distinct factors. The findings in this study may help gain fresh insight into the relationship between openness and productivity and growth performance in the APEC economies.First revision received: July 2001/Final revision received: May 2003The author thanks two anonymous referees for very helpful comments.     

A metafrontier approach for measuring Malmquist productivity index

This paper presents an alternative framework for the decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index by using the concept of a metafrontier. The approach employed allows the calculation of technical efficiency changes, as well as technical changes, for economic agents operating under different technologies. It also enables the computation of the technological gap and its changes for economic agents operating under different technologies. This framework is applied to the analysis of panel data on 58 countries over a period of 31 years from 1970 to 2000. The empirical results show that Asian countries have attempted to move towards the frontier technology and that European countries have taken the lead in the world frontier technology.     

Trends in hours and economic growth

We study the substitutions between home and market production over long periods of time. We use the results to get predictions about long-run trends in aggregate market hours of work and about employment shifts across economic sectors, driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. The model can rationalize the observed falling or U-shaped pattern for aggregate market hours, the complete marketization of home production in agriculture and manufacturing, and the shift from agriculture and manufacturing to services. We find support for the model's predictions in long-run US data.     

对服务生产力评价模式的探讨

顾客参与使服务生产的投入和产出质量都具有不确定性 ,考察服务生产力不能套用以数量为主的制造业生产力评价模式。在服务经济时代的大背景下 ,倡导新型的服务生产力评价模式对引导服务企业正确开展经营管理活动具有重要的意义。