Entry costs, industry structure, and cross-country income and TFP differences

Entry costs vary dramatically across countries. To assess their impact on cross-country differences in output and TFP, we construct a model with endogenous entry and operation decisions by firms. We calibrate the model to match the U.S. distribution of employment and firms by size. Higher entry costs lead to greater misallocation of productive factors and lower TFP and output. In the model, countries in the lowest decile of the entry costs distribution have 1.32 to 1.45 times higher TFP and 1.52 to 1.75 times higher output per worker than countries in the highest decile. As in the data, higher entry costs are associated with lower entry rates and business density.     

Financial frictions and total factor productivity: Accounting for the real effects of financial crises

Financial crises in emerging economies are accompanied by a large fall in total factor productivity. We explore the role of financial frictions in exacerbating the misallocation of resources and explaining this drop in TFP. We build a two-sector model of a small open economy with a working capital constraint on the purchase of intermediate goods. The model is calibrated to Mexico before the 1995 crisis and subjected to an unexpected shock to interest rates. The financial friction generates an endogenous fall in TFP and output and can explain more than half of the fall in TFP and 74 percent of the fall in GDP per worker.     

Entry costs and cross-country differences in productivity and output

This paper contributes to the literature on cross-country income differences by studying the effect of entry barriers on productivity and output. Using instrumental variable regressions I show that higher entry costs significantly reduce output per worker and that they do so by lowering total factor productivity. In particular, an increase in entry costs by 80% of income per capita, which is one half of their standard deviation in my sample, is estimated to decrease total factor productivity and output per worker by 22% and 29%, respectively.      

Standardization of intermediate goods and international trade

Abstract.  This paper analyzes the relationship between standardization of intermediate inputs and international trade. We employ a two-country, general equilibrium model with differentiated manufacturing goods. Production of manufacturing goods requires specific intermediate inputs, which can be either specialized or standardized. Standardization and the pattern of trade are determined endogenously in our model. In this framework we derive the effects of trade integration, that is, a decline in trading costs for intermediate goods, on the equilibrium outcome.     

A theory of racial diversity, segregation, and productivity

Empirical evidence illustrates that diversity generates both economic costs and benefits. This paper develops a theoretical model that accounts for the positive and deleterious effects of heterogeneity. First, an expanded Solow Growth Model demonstrates that the direct effects of diversity can be positive or negative, and depend upon the size of fixed parameter values. Second, diversity also influences individuals' location decisions. Segregation (variation of diversity across regions) always reduces national output per worker, so if diversity induces integration, it indirectly augments productivity as well. Finally, political policies aimed at reducing interaction costs across groups may actually reduce aggregate output per worker by encouraging segregation.     

要素市场扭曲、资源错置与生产率

要素市场政策扭曲会降低全要素生产率。本文在一个随机动态一般均衡模型框架下,定量考察我国偏向国有企业政策的效率损失。理论模型引入了垄断竞争的中间产品生产企业与内生化的进入退出选择,用不同的全要素生产率增长随机过程,刻画了要素市场面临政策扭曲的国有与私有企业。为了全面反映产业特征,本文用制造业企业微观数据,来校准企业全要素生产率随机增长。通过校准,定量模型表明,源于政策扭曲的资源错置,导致了非常高昂的效率损失。     

Economic growth and poverty traps in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of education and TFP shocks

This paper investigates the “education-total factor productivity trade-off” in explaining income per worker differences between sub-Saharan (unlucky) and G7 (lucky) economies. First, we examine the dynamics of average years of schooling (i.e. education), capital per worker, income per worker, and total factor productivity (TFP) across sub-Saharan and G7 countries. We confirm that physical capital and education levels partially explain income per worker differences between lucky and unlucky economies. Second, we undertake a novel examination of the impact of technology shocks on income per worker, with the goal of understanding the role of technology variation in causing cross-country income per worker differences, and as a potential contributor to overall slow growth in the sub-Saharan region. In a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework, we show that the impact of “ad hoc” TFP shocks on income per worker is larger in unlucky economies than in lucky ones. We observe that average TFP volatility in the “unlucky world” is eight times higher than in the “G7 world”. We argue that the order of magnitude of the impact heavily depends on the level of the TFP volatility. Last, we suggest that the documented differences in the amount of physical capital and in the productivity of human capital between these two regions add conceptual support for the existence of poverty traps for sub-Saharan Africa.     

UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD WOOL MARKET: TRADE,PRODUCTIVITY AND GROWERS’ INCOMES*

Applying recent estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) growth on Australian sheep farms, we analyse the long‐run effects of TFP growth on the world wool market using a detailed model of the world wool market that treats raw wool, wool textiles and wool garments as heterogeneous commodities. The model divides the world wool market into nine regions and eight major industrial sectors capturing the extreme nature of the multistage production system through which wool passes. We find that regional sheep producer's welfare responds by between ‐0.9 per cent and 0.7 per cent assuming conservative TFP growth over the period 1995/96–2003/04. Sensitivity analysis shows the welfare effects to be robust with respect to all model parameters, but sensitive to the size of the TFP growth and the degree of TFP spill‐over. Our realistic representation of the multistage nature of the wool production system shows that wool inputs steadily decline in importance in moving from early‐ to late‐stage processing. This production structure indicates that the productivity of sheep farmers has little effect on the prices of and demand for wool garments. In contrast, trade in wool inputs is very responsive to the productivity of sheep farmers.     

A theory of racial diversity,segregation, and productivity

Empirical evidence illustrates that diversity generates both economic costs and benefits. This paper develops a theoretical model that accounts for the positive and deleterious effects of heterogeneity. First, an expanded Solow Growth Model demonstrates that the direct effects of diversity can be positive or negative, and depend upon the size of fixed parameter values. Second, diversity also influences individuals' location decisions. Segregation (variation of diversity across regions) always reduces national output per worker, so if diversity induces integration, it indirectly augments productivity as well. Finally, political policies aimed at reducing interaction costs across groups may actually reduce aggregate output per worker by encouraging segregation.     

Economic Freedom and Economic Performance in Latin America: A Panel Data Analysis

This paper performs panel regressions of output per worker, capital intensity, human capital, and total factor productivity in Latin America on measures of economic freedom in five policy areas. Results show that a smaller government raises output per worker in Latin America but not in the OECD. Stronger property rights and a tighter monetary policy also raise output per worker, but greater freedom to trade internationally does not, despite doing so in the OECD. Deregulation lowers output per worker in both Latin America and the OECD. Finally, a tighter monetary policy raises total factor productivity (TFP) but reduces capital intensity in Latin America, while deregulation raises capital intensity but lowers TFP in both sets of countries.     

Second thoughts on development accounting

The relative roles of factor inputs and productivity are estimated in explaining the level of economic development. For a large sample of countries, it is shown that international differences in factor inputs account for between two thirds and three quarters of international differences in output per worker if alternative identifying productivity assumptions and a quality-adjusted measure of human capital are employed. For a sample of OECD countries, it is found that all differences in output per worker can be attributed to differences in factor inputs, leaving no role for international productivity differences. This result supports the reasoning of a traditional neoclassical growth model.     

THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND ROUNDABOUT PRODUCTION: ALLYN YOUNG REVISITED

Abstract.  This paper investigates Allyn Young's two important doctrines concerning the division of labor and roundabout production. First, apart from advancing the state of knowledge, the progressive division of labor that can occur within a given population encourages the adoption of more specialized, differentiated intermediate goods in the production process. Second, the level of division of labor and the extent of the market depend on each other. Using a general equilibrium model with increasing returns to specialization, economies of complementarity between intermediate goods, and transaction costs, we demonstrate that the level of division of labor and the number of intermediate goods increase concurrently as transaction conditions are improved.     

Offshoring and jobs: The myriad channels of influence

Offshoring reallocates jobs inside firms, between firms, and across sectors, affecting the economy-wide unemployment rate. We study these channels in a model with labor market frictions and two sectors—a differentiated-good sector comprising heterogeneous firms that can offshore, and a homogeneous-good sector. A decline in offshoring costs affects intrafirm and intrasectoral reallocation of jobs in the differentiated-good sector through a selection effect, a productivity effect, and a job-relocation effect. The key parameters determining the impact of offshoring on jobs at various margins, as well as on the economy-wide unemployment rate, are the elasticity of substitution between inputs, the elasticity of substitution between varieties of differentiated goods, and the elasticity of demand for differentiated goods as a whole. Changes in search frictions affect unemployment both directly and through their interaction with offshoring.     

POPULATION AGEING,CAPITAL INTENSITY AND LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY

This paper analyses the implications of population ageing for the capital intensity of output and, therefore, labour productivity. Population ageing leads to sectoral shifts in demand for goods and services. If such shifts occur between goods that differ in their capital intensity, there will be a change in the average capital intensity of the economy and, therefore, in average labour productivity. In order to gauge the magnitudes of such effects, the present paper reports simulations of a calibrated model with two final goods and two intermediate goods, using data for two Pacific Rim countries for comparison: the United States and Australia. The data for these countries suggest that population ageing will, on average, shift expenditure towards goods with a relatively high capital intensity. The magnitude of the increase in labour productivity according to the simulations is likely to be small, but perhaps not trivial: in the order of 1–4% per annum by 2050. This might partially offset the negative effect of ageing on living standards.     

Trade liberalization and Firms’ export performance in China: Theory and evidence

The focus of the literature surrounding trade liberalization has recently shifted from trade liberalization in imported final goods to studying the effects of trade liberalization in imported intermediate inputs. This emphasis fits very well the trade liberalization experience of China following its accession to the WTO in 2001. In this paper, we build a multi-sector heterogenous-firm model with trade in both intermediate goods and final goods, and we ask: How do final-goods producers respond to trade liberalization in imported inputs? Do they respond differently across sectors? How do firms respond differently to trade liberalization in imported-outputs instead? We separate the total effect of trade liberalization into those caused by inter-sectoral resource allocation (IRA) and by within-sector selection of firms according to productivity (which we call Melitz selection effect). It is the IRA effect that gives rise to differential impacts of trade liberalization in different sectors. These impacts include changes in the probability of entry into the export market, the fraction of firms that export and the share of export revenue. To test our hypotheses, we carry out both quantitative analysis and empirical analysis by using Chinese firm-level data. The results are consistent with our theoretical predictions.     

Imports and TFP at the firm level: the role of absorptive capacity

This paper estimates the effect of the decision to import intermediate goods and capital equipment on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) at the firm level on a panel of Spanish firms (1991–2002). We use two alternative approaches. In the first, we estimate TFP and apply a diff‐in‐diff estimator with a control group constructed by propensity‐score matching. In the second, direct method, we estimate TFP with imported inputs as a state variable in one stage. Both approaches show that the effect of a firm's decision to source intermediates and capital equipment abroad on its TFP depends critically on its capacity to absorb technology, measured by the proportion of skilled labour.     

专业化产业集聚、空间成本与区域工业化

本文扩展了贸易成本的范围,认为贸易成本不仅包括产品运输成本,而且也包括要素流动成本,并引入前后向产业联系,认为中间产品使用及种类的增加所创造的成本和需求联系效应有利于提高最终产品的生产效率。在此基础上文章发展了可解的中心-外围模型,并探讨了在各种条件下相应的经济学含义,认为在推动我国区域经济一体化的进程中,对落后地区的技术支持必不可少,重视区域间产业发展的互动,否则,我国区域经济一体化进程难以有效推进。     

The role of public infrastructure and subsidies for firm location and international outsourcing

This paper presents a model in which final goods producers outsource intermediate input production. Intermediate inputs are differentiated and their production can be located at home or abroad. The model is used to examine competitive location policy in a (two-country) free trade area (FTA). It is shown that national public infrastructure investment has a positive effect on both the number of intermediate input producers and the return to the immobile factor in the home country. International outsourcing from home declines. Opposite effects are triggered in the partner country. In a welfare analysis we characterize national infrastructure policies that aim to maximize national income (net of tax costs) and compare the non-cooperative FTA-equilibrium with optimal policies from an integrated point of view. We show whether or not there is a need for policy coordination. Firm subsidies are discussed as an alternative to public infrastructure investment.     

A requiem for the Australian motor vehicle industry

The last automobiles manufactured in Australia rolled off the assembly line in the fall of 2017. This article looks at some of the factors that have impacted the industry since 1968 and led to its demise, including a high value of the Australian dollar in recent years, strategic decisions on the part of parent companies and reductions in governmental support and tariff protection. We estimate a cost function for the industry with inputs of domestic capital and labour and insourced intermediate goods as well as imported intermediate goods. The findings include that the remaining firms are operating in an output range of strongly statistically significant economies of scale, and that all of the input pairs are substitutes except for statistically significant complementary relationships between capital and domestic intermediate goods and labour and foreign intermediate goods. Unexpected results are that an increase in output per assembly plant appears to have a positive effect on total cost, while an increase in the effective tariff and an increase in the number of models appears to have a negative effect. One explanation for these robust but unexpected findings may be that total profit contribution is a part of total cost, and, therefore, factors that increase total profit contribution will also increase total cost.     

Public and private inputs in aggregate production and growth: a cross-country efficiency approach

In a cross section of OECD countries, we replace the macroeconomic production function by a production possibility frontier, total factor productivity being the composite effect of efficiency scores and possibility frontier changes. We consider, for the periods 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 one output – GDP per worker – and three inputs – human capital, public physical capital per worker and private physical capital per worker. We use a semi-parametric analysis, computing Malmquist productivity indexes, and we also resort to stochastic frontier analysis. Results show that private capital is important for growth, although public and human capital also contribute positively. A governance indicator, a nondiscretionary input, explains inefficiency. Better governance helps countries to achieve a better performance. Nonparametric and parametric results coincide rather closely on the movements of the countries vis-à-vis the possibility frontier and on their relative distances to the frontier.