The Pin Factory Revisited: Product Diversification and Productivity Growth

Manufacturing plants have been producing an increasingly homogeneous product mix over recent years. Individual plants have been manufacturing fewer and less dissimilar products. The trend is ubiquitous across industries and is unlikely to be a random event. An index of product diversification is introduced into a fixed-effects model of productivity growth derived formally from a factor-minimal cost function. Specialization at the production site is found to have spurred productivity growth. Over the 1963–87 period, decreasing product heterogeneity has accounted for about 17 percent of productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing, second in importance only to technical change and equaling the contribution of scale economies.     

Ownership Advantages, Foreign Production and Productivity: Evidence from Austrian Manufacturing Firms

Multi-plant economies of scale generated by firm-specific assets form a constituent feature of multinational firms. This paper uses a panel of Austrian manufacturing firms to test for multi-plant economies of scale by examining the dependence of labor productivity in plants of the home country on the volume of foreign production. As there is an inherent causality problem in testing this proposition, the econometric estimates use a simultaneous equation framework. The estimation results indeed indicate that firms which operate plants abroad achieve productivity advantages in domestic plants. The same holds true for affiliates of foreign multinationals.     

中国制造业产业集聚的实证研究

文章利用集中度、基尼系数、赫芬达尔指数(N指数)等指标,对中国20个二位数制造业门类的集聚性进行了实证研究,并对其中5个门类进行了细化研究,得出结论:中国部分制造业已显现出较强的集中性,且主要集中在东部沿海省市,但一些规模经济和范围经济性强、在国外具有显著集聚特征的行业的集聚性还比较低。     

Technological Opportunity and Economies of Scale in Research Productivity: A Study on Three Global Industries

In this study, the author tests for economies of scale with the use of patent citationsand assesses the impacts of technological opportunity on research productivity inthree global industries, namely, computer, chemical, and electrical and electronic.Technological opportunity in an industry is jointly represented by knowledgespillovers, inter-firm research overlap and scope of research. In particular, the effect of knowledge spillovers is decomposed into internal, intra-industry and inter-industry spillovers. The results suggest no evidence for economies of scale, but the impacts of various aspects of technological opportunity on research productivity are significantly positive. Moreover, the data indicate that if the number of firms in each overlapping research area is small, a rise in the number of these areas enhances research productivity.     

市场势力与规模效应的直接测度——运用新产业组织实证方法对中国钢铁产业的研究

在反垄断与管制过程中,最核心的问题就是对产业市场势力给出直接有效的测定。本文引进近年来发展的新产业组织实证方法(New Empirical IndustrialOrganization),根据中国产业数据的实际进行调整,引入动态的技术进步模型结构,允许企业之间存在生产率差异和规模效应,采用2004—2007年间的面板数据,运用双向随机效应模型GMM估计方法,直接估计了中国钢铁业的市场势力溢价和规模弹性。通过计量得到结论:①目前中国的钢铁产业不存在系统性的市场势力。钢铁产业依然处于完全竞争状态,竞争十分激烈;②传统意义上认为钢铁业所具有的规模效应在中国上市钢铁企业中没有体现,相反中国钢铁产业存在规模不经济的重要特征。     

A DEA Approach to Understanding the Productivity Growth of Malaysia's Manufacturing Industries

This paper seeks to explain the productivity growth performance of Malaysia's manufacturing sector using a panel data of 28 industries from 1981–1996. Here, the data envelopment analysis technique is used to calculate and decompose the Malmquist index of total factor productivity (TFP) growth into technical change, change in technical efficiency and change in scale efficiency. This allows the identification of the sources of productivity growth which is crucial for policy formulation. It was found that the annual TFP growth of the Malaysian manufacturing sector was low at 0.8% and this was driven by small gains in both technical change and technical efficiency, with industries operating close to optimum scale.     

The response by the Norwegian aluminium industry to changing market structure

This paper analyses how changes in market structure have affected the margins (measured by the Lerner index) of Norwegian aluminium plants. Instead of showing the expected negative trend, due to increased competition internationally, the margins are found to move procyclically around a constant that significantly exceeds zero. Three explanations for this stability in the levels of the margins are identified; a better exploitation of scale economies, increased productivity and product specialisation which allows Norwegian producer prices to increase more rapidly than the international reference price.     

制造业外资进入与市场势力波动:竞争还是垄断

对外资市场效应的评估和计量是处理好外资政策、产业政策和反垄断政策关系的重要问题。本文采用中国1999—2010年28个两位数和447个四位数代码制造业面板数据,首先估计了两位数代码制造业的市场势力水平,然后进一步考察外资进入的市场效应,并测度外资引致的福利变动。研究表明:制造业各行业存在显著的市场势力,但金融危机前后市场势力溢价水平波动较大。全样本结果显示制造业市场势力溢价约为6.2%,但金融危机前样本证实市场势力溢价高达22.1%。细分产业中,外资的竞争效应占主导,但在部分产业中外资表现出了反竞争效应。制造业总体层面上,外资进入与市场势力波动之间呈现U形非线性关系,拐点稳定在外资比重为47.3%—54.0%的区间内。从福利角度看,外资进入的竞争效应,使得垄断带来的无谓损失减少了3334.70亿元;但FDI的反竞争效应使得相应行业垄断福利损失增加2407.45亿元。     

The trade-off between production and transportation costs in determining optimal plant size

An important element of manufacturing strategy is to decide on the shipping radius and the size of a geographically focused plant. This decision involves a trade-off between exploiting economies of scale in production by building a large plant and decreasing transportation costs by building a small plant. The paper presents a model for analysing this trade-off. It is shown that scale economies in transportation facilitate the exploitation of production economies of scale. For an optimal sized plant, the ratio of transportation to production costs does not depend on the absolute cost levels in production and transportation, but only the economies of scale present in production and in transportation.     

Union Presence and Labour Productivity in British Manufacturing Industry. A Reply to Nolan and Marginson

Evidence on the association between union presence and labour productivity in British manufacturing industry is surveyed. The weight of the evidence suggests that around 1980 highly unionized organizations had a lower level of labour productivity than corresponding less highly unionized organizations, but that during the first half of the 1980s unionized work-places, firms and industries had superior productivity growth to their less unionized counterparts. Various criticisms made by Nolan and Marginson of earlier studies on unions and productivity are evaluated.     

The effects of divestiture,privatization, and competition on productivity in U.S. and U.K. telecommunications

The telecommunications industries in the United States and the United Kingdom have undergone massive changes during the 1980s. This paper decomposes the total factor productivity growth of AT&T and British Telecom into their various components. It finds that while a great deal of the productivity increases apparently resulted from continuing scale economies, competition for AT&T and privatization of BT have been responsible for 17 percent and 25 percent of their respective gains in recent years. Among other variables, divestiture appears to have initially depressed AT&T's productivity growth, and competition for BT is too insignificant to yet have an impact.     

市场扭曲、跨企业的资源配置与制造业部门的生产率

近年来,在中国制造业部门的各个产业里,不同企业之间的生产率表现出很大的差异,而且,企业的规模分布与生产率分布只有微弱的关联。在这篇文章里,我们讨论了市场扭曲与产业内不同企业之间生产率差异的内在联系。我们的研究结果显示,在几个代表性产业里,市场不完全引起的产业内跨企业的资源配置扭曲解释了企业间基本生产要素的生产率差异和全要素生产率差异的实质性部分,并导致了总量层面40%以上的全要素生产率损失。进一步,我们还发现,地区市场分割和金融市场的不完全是造成产品和要素市场扭曲的重要原因,而企业所有制和政府补贴对跨企业的资源配置没有显著的影响。     

出口活动、贸易强度与制造业行业生产率——来自我国中部地区的经验数据

文章以我国中部6省制造业的21个行业为研究对象,采用DEA数据包络分析法科学测度了中部6省制造业行业最近十年的全要素生产率,再结合静态与动态面板模型对出口活动、强度与制造业企业生产率的关系进行了实证研究。结果表明中部地区的出口强度与整体制造业的生产率具有正相关,促进了中部地区发展;而出口活动对制造业生产率的促进作用主要是集中在高技术行业。对于传统行业,出口活动反而降低了制造业生产率。     

Testing the Competitive Environment and the Persistence of Profits Hypotheses

In the present paper I examine Brozen's (1970, 1971a, b, c, 1982) Competitive Environment Hypothesis and Mueller's (1977) Persistence of Profits Hypothesis in the Greek manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1984. The analysis reveals a positive (market power) association between past and current price-cost margins, although a considerable scrambling in the ranks of price-cost margins takes place over time. A high concentration and high barriers to entry sub-sample of markets examined, showed a general reduction in concentration, barriers to entry and a mobility in price-cost margins ranks, indicating that disciplinary competitive forces are also at work within manufacturing markets.     

Microeconomic and Macroeconomic Influences on Entry and Exit of Firms

We examine the entry and exit process in the Finnish manufacturing industry using a six year panel of three-digit industries. The results show that scale economies form a significant entry barrier, but the evidence on their role as an exit barrier is weaker. Industry growth has a positive influence on entry and a negative influence on exit, but also variables describing the general economic climate have an influence on the entry-exit process. The variables describing the monetary transmission mechanism have an expected influence on entry. However, the role of macroeconomic influences on exit is inconclusive. Both entry and exit have almost unit elasticity with respect to industry size, measured by the number of firms in the previous period. Entry and exit rates are therefore practically independent of industry size.     

基于DEA-Tobit的装备制造业上市公司经营绩效研究——来自2005～2010年装备制造业的经验数据分析

本文以2005～2010年中国装备制造业上市公司为研究主体,以其经营绩效为研究对象,利用主成分法和因子分析对指标进行筛选并剔除,构建装备制造业上市公司绩效指标体系.运用DEAMalmquist指数法对经营绩效进行评价并得出装备制造业全要素生产率的提高主要得力于技术进步,而技术效率也是影响全要素生产率的因素的结论.通过Tobit回归找出其他因素对经营绩效的影响程度.实证表明,装备制造业整体绩效并不理想,要想使装备制造业健康持续发展就需同时兼顾技术效率、技术进步的提高,同时重视公司内部的管理与决策能力,实现规模经济.     

Optimal Concentration and Deadweight Losses in Canadian Manufacturing

When economies of scale are impontant, there may be too many firms in a market to effectively exploit these scale economies. Although more firms imply reduced market power, this may not offset the adverse impact of higher unit cost. We explore this trade-off by estimating for 107 Canadian industries optimal concentration, this being the concentration that maximizes, for given firm conduct, producers and consumers' surplus. We then calculate deadweight losses as the difference between total surplus at optimal concentration and total surplus at current concentration levels. Among the conclusions are that the majority of industries have concentration that is too low.     

A Sensitivity Analysis of IRR Leasing Models

In this article we argue that advances made in automation, communication, and manufacturing portend a dramatic reversal of the “bigger is better” approach to cost reductions prevalent in many basic infrastructure industries; for example, transportation, electric power generation, and raw material processing. We show that the traditional reductions in capital costs achieved by scaling up in size are generally matched by learning effects in the mass production process when scaling up in numbers instead. In addition, using the U.S. electricity generation sector as a case study, we argue that the primary operating cost advantage of large unit scale is reduced labor, which can be eliminated by employing low-cost automation technologies. Finally, we argue that locational, operational, and financial flexibilities that accompany smaller unit scale can reduce investment and operating costs even further. All of these factors combined imply that with current technology, economies of numbers may well dominate economies of unit scale. Yet realizing the full potential of small unit scale will require technologists and business leaders to develop a new ability to “think small.”     

Accounting for the Causes and Consequences of Industrial Employment Shift

This paper analyzes the 1981-87 employment shifts away from high-wage industries, using a shift-share framework, coupled with a two-sector general equilibrium model. I find that (1) the shift-share drag on average pay growth was unprecedented in the postwar period, on the order of 1/4-1/3 percent per year, for hourly compensation; and (2) output shifts, including the trade deficit, were a more important cause of the employment shifts than were rapid productivity growth in manufacturing and other contracting industries. As a result, the shift-share drag on average pay growth should be interpreted primarily as coming out of aggregate productivity growth, rather than as a redistributional phenomenon.     

Estimating and comparing learning curves in three Asian economies

This paper consists of two parts. In the first, a method is suggested to isolate the effects of scale economies on learning phenomena by integrating the conventionally specified learning curve with the production function in neoclassical economics. The problem of establishing the variable for measuring experience is dealt with in the estimation procedure. Using this method we estimated the learning curves of 20 industries in the manufacturing sector in Singapore using data taken from 1961 to 1991. More modern industries like electronics, precision instruments and pharmaceutics have steeper learning curves than older industries. Among traditional industries, the food and beverage industry has a greater learning potential than others. In the second part of the paper, the learning curves for 11 common industries in South Korea, Japan and Singapore were estimated and compared. The Japanese industries are found to have steeper learning curves compared to those in Singapore and South Korea.The authors are from the Department of Business Policy, Faculty of Business Administration, National University of Singapore. The authors would like to thank Ms Tan Mui Lee for her assistance in preparing the time series data used for this study.