The contributions of productivity, price changes and firm size to profitability

Sources of profit change for Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications firm, are examined. A new method allows for changes, in a firm’s profits to be broken down into separate effects due to productivity change, price changes, and growth in the firm’s size. This in turn allows us to calculate the distribution of the benefits of productivity improvements between consumers, labor, and shareholders. The results show that around half the benefits from Telstra’s productivity improvements from 1984 to 1994 were passed on to consumers in the form of real price reductions.

Human capital and the internationalisation of venture capital firms

We examine the neglected area of internationalisation by VCs. Using a representative sample of 195 VCs, we show that the decision of a European VC firm to invest internationally is driven by its human resources. Having more VC executives in general and more VC executives with previous international experience in specific, results in a higher probability of investing internationally. In contrast, more VC executives with experience in the VC industry or with an engineering background lead to a higher probability of remaining domestic.     

Explaining productivity differences in North Carolina factories

Using detailed survey data collected from 95 large factories in North Carolina, this article examines the reasons why some factories are more productive than others. Six distinct measures of productivity are used as independent variables in the regression analyses reported. The results suggest five major themes that are shared by the most productive plants: simpler flow of materials through the process, valuing people, attending to quality, investing in hardware, and accounting for the industry's productivity growth. Several factors such as size and unionization are of no apparent importance to an explanation of cross-factory productivity differences.     

Analysis of regional productivity with capital as a quasi-fixed factor

Most existing studies of regional productivity growth do not incorporate the effect of variations in capacity utilization on changes in output. By failing to do so, their factor productivity estimates are biased. To overcome this shortcoming, we adjust multifactor productivity growth measure for changes in capacity utilization. Our technique recognizes that capital is a quasi-fixed factor which implies that capital in the short run can be either under- or over-utilized by a firm. Our results from 1974 to 1978 show that capacity adjusted multifactor productivity growth measure exceeds capacity unadjusted multifactor productivity growth measure for the nine census divisions. The bias in the capacity unadjusted measure of multifactor productivity growth is approximately 8 percent in East North Central and over 33 percent in Mountain. We find that the aggregate factor productivity growth is slowest in the traditional manufacturing belt (Middle Atlantic and East North Central divisions). The level of aggregate factor productivity in the manufacturing belt, however, is almost 33 percent higher than in regions in the south.     

Public capital formation and productivity growth: Some international evidence

This paper examines the proposition that public capital spending fosters productivity growth in the private sector using a pooled sample of seven OECD countries over the 1963–1988 period. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between public capital formation and the growth rate of labor productivity. This result is not sensitive to whether there is constant returns to scale to some or all inputs, whether the stochastic formulation of the pooled model is a fixed- or a random-effect specification, whether the model includes an energy variable, or whether the data are expressed in the log-differenced or logarithmic form.     

人文资本特征、居民支付意愿与住宅价格

在构建人文资本与住宅意愿支付价格关系模型的基础上,运用2006年天津市有关数据,研究了人文资本特征对住宅价格的影响,并对人文资本特征溢价值进行了测算。对天津市的实证分析表明,人文资本密度指标中,只有居民素质、物业服务质量、小区周边体育场的距离对住宅总价有一定的影响,但并不显著。这说明人们对人文资本特征的偏好非常弱,天津市居民的住宅需求还处于基本需求阶段,尚未大规模进入改善需求阶段。以上结论对正确认识消费者偏好、公共投资效应、城市规划状况及住宅价格的合理性,具有重要的参考价值。     

Bridging the barriers: knowledge connections,productivity and capital accumulation

The paper contributes to the explanation of the large differences in cross-country productivity performance by modelling and testing the effects of social barriers to communication on productivity and capital accumulation. In an optimal growth model, social barriers to communication, which impede the formation of knowledge connections, are shown to reduce both transitory and steady-state levels of total factor productivity (TFP), per capita consumption and reproducible capital. Empirical testing yields a robust and theoretically consistent result: linguistic barriers to communication reduce productivity and capital accumulation. The findings provide an explanation for cross-country differences in TFP, and fresh insights into how productivity ‘catch up’ may be initiated.

Human capital,social capital,and innovation: a multi-country study

The authors examine the effects of two forms of capital, i.e. human capital and social capital, on innovation at the country level. We use secondary data from the World Development Report on a country's overall human development to test for a relationship between human capital and innovation. We also use previous conceptualizations of social capital as comprising trust, associational activity, and norms of civic behaviour to test for relationships between these indicators of social capital and innovation using data from the World Values Survey. Unlike most previous studies that examined human and social capital within a given country, we develop and empirically test a theoretically grounded model that relates human and social capital to innovation at the societal level across 59 different countries, thus providing a more global view of the role of these two forms of capital in generating value. We find strong support for the positive relationship between human capital and innovation and partial support for the positive effect of trust and associational activity on innovation. However, contrary to our prediction, we find a negative relationship between norms of civic behaviour and one of our innovation measures.     

人力资本激励机制的探讨

人力资本是企业制度安排的重要因素,作为知识经济时代创新与发展的力量之源,在今天有着不可替代的特殊作用.文章着重从人力资本的激励机制的界定及其内容和发展趋势,对新时期人力资本的激励机制进行了广泛而深入的探讨.     

人力资本激励机制的探讨

人力资本是企业制度安排的重要因素,作为知识经济时代创新与发展的力量之源,在今天有着不可替代的特殊作用。文章着重从人力资本的激励机制的界定及其内容和发展趋势,对新时期人力资本的激励机制进行了广泛而深入的探讨。     

The determinants of capital inflows: Does opacity of recipient country explain the flows?

This paper examines the relationship between international capital flows and the opacity of recipient countries. We use the Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) [Price Waterhouse Coopers, 2001. The Opacity Index: A Project of the Price Waterhouse Coopers Endowment for the Study of Transparency and Sustainability] opacity index for the year 2000 and investigate its influence on three types of net international capital flows: foreign direct investment, portfolio capital and international bank lending. We find support for higher opacity leading to a reduction in capital inflows, in general. More interestingly, however, in some cases we find counterintuitive results of more capital flows when opacity relating to specific business climate increases—accounting and regulations for foreign direct investment flows, corruption and regulation for portfolio flows, and corruption and economic opacities for international lending flows. This may be because of potentially higher profit opportunities that may be present due to the greater role unofficial channels of investment practices play as these opacity indices rise. Also, we find international bank lending, in general, responded very differently from foreign direct investment and portfolio flows.     

Human resource management in Botswana: approaches to enhancing productivity in the public sector

Public-sector productivity is an issue that is now squarely on the agenda in the global arena. In recent times it has also emerged in the research and literature on human resource management and development as a significant aspect of the advocacy for re-engineering or re-inventing government, entrepreneurial government, quality management in the public sector, public sector efficiency and so on. This paper discusses and analyses productivity in the public sector in Botswana, the current approaches being employed to enhance it, and advocates, from a human resource management perspective, policy areas which can be beneficial for the sustainable enhancement of that productivity in the country.     

Human and organizational capital: typologies among Spanish firms

This paper uses survey data on 965 Spanish manufacturing firms to examine the implementation of innovative management practices and the relationship of this with the organization of work and human resource management. The paper takes into account transformations in technology, quality management and the organization of work. Using cluster analysis, we identify the different paths that firms are following in order to improve their performance, finding that simultaneous transformations in several dimensions lead to greater success than partial transformation, or none at all.     

中美证券公司资本配置差异分析

中国证券行业发展速度很快,但是效益普遍不好,亏损面很大,除外部环境制约外,内部资本运营水平不高仍是关键因素.本文选择有代表性的美国若干证券公司,解析其资产负债结构、收入结构等资本配置和运营形式,从而为我国证券公司找到差距和提供可借鉴之处,以改善中国证券行业经营状况,增强其抵抗与日俱增的各种风险之能力.     

Influence of healthy human capital and environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in China

Environment affects the health of residents; to promote high-quality economic development, their combined effect is crucial in measuring green total factor productivity (GTFP). Yet, scholars seldom consider the regulatory effect of the environment, spillover effect of healthy human capital, and synergistic effect between the environment and the health of residents. Using the panel threshold model and spatial Durbin model, along with the measurement of inter-provincial GTFP from 2011 to 2019, we examine the effect of environmental regulation, healthy human capital, and their synergistic effect on the development of the green economy in China. The results reveal that environmental regulation inhibits the improvement of GTFP, whereas healthy human capital and interaction items promote the improvement of GTFP. There exists a threshold effect of environmental regulation on the promoting effect of healthy human capital on the GTFP in China, in general, and inland areas in particular. Moreover, environmental regulation, healthy human capital, and interaction items have significant spatial spillover effects on the GTFP in provinces with similar economic attributes.     

Human capital inequality and income inequality: testing for causality

This study investigates the causal relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality in case of Pakistan. The annual time series data ranging from 1973 to 2009 is used for econometric analysis. Johanson co-integration and Granger Causality tests are used to confirm the existence of long run relationship and the causal relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality. The results indicate that there is positive relationship between the two types of inequalities in the long run. The estimates of causality test indicate that income inequality causes the human capital inequality but human capital inequality does not cause income inequality. Policy initiatives to reduce income inequality may empower people economically to avail skill building opportunities and accumulate their human capital through access to educational services.     

Human capital, instability and foreign investment in transition economies

I argue that the West should lend money to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (FSUEE) to prevent excessive deterioration of its human capital stock. Such loans can improve the recipient countries' welfare by allowing them to enjoy the long-run benefits of a large human capital stock without incurring the costs of maintaining these stocks through lean economic times. The West can receive a fully competitive rate of return on these loans, and future foreign investors will be able to earn high rates of return by supplying physical capital to a newly stabilized FSUEE with abundant human capital.     

One-stage structural models to explain city size

Several papers have estimated the parameters of Pareto distributions for city sizes in different countries, but only one has attempted to explain the differing magnitudes of these parameters with a set of country-specific explanatory variables. While it is reassuring that there has been some research which advances beyond simple “curve-fitting” to explore the determinants of city size distributions, the existing research uses a two-stage OLS method which yields invalid second-stage standard errors (and, consequently, questionable hypothesis tests). In this paper, we develop candidate one-stage structural models with normal and non-normal errors which accommodate truncated size distributions, potentially Pareto-like shapes, and city-level variables. In general, these new models are nonlinear in parameters. We illustrate with data on U.S. urban areas.