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Labor Productivity (labor + productivity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	88%

Terms modified by Labor Productivity

labor productivity growth

Selected Abstracts

Labor Productivity in Western Europe 1975,1985: An Intercountry, Interindustry Analysis

JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2000
Erik Dietzenbacher
Using intercountry input-output tables and disaggregated employment data, we decompose labor productivity growth between 1975 and 1985 in six Western European countries into partial effects of six determinants including changing international trade and changing final demand. To this end, new multiplicative decomposition formulas are derived and implemented. In a similar way, we study labor productivity changes in vertically integrated industries. The effects of structural change on convergence are investigated also. We see this paper as an attempt to merge the convergence literature with earlier single-country productivity-change decompositions using input-output data. [source]

Labor productivity of small and large manufacturing firms: the case of Taiwan

CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 3 2000
M. Hsu
This work studies the factors influencing the labor productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms using Taiwan as a case study. A special emphasis is placed on two possible international channels: exports and foreign direct investment (FDI). Different from conventional studies, we employ the two-stage switching regressions to correct the firm-size effect on labor productivity and estimate labor productivity for SMEs and large firms. The main findings are as follows. First, the estimates of the selectivity variable are statistically significant for both SMEs and large firms, supporting the hypothesis of correcting the effect of firm-size truncation. Second, while a larger trade intensity significantly increases the labor productivity of SMEs, it deteriorates significantly that of large firms. Third, FDI enhances the labor productivity of SMEs internally, whereas it has a negative spillover on that of other small and large firms in the industry. While the first outcome lends supports to the role of self-selection, the remaining stands in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom. [source]

Explaining agricultural productivity growth: an international perspective

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2010
Derek Headey
Labor productivity; Multi-output distance function; Total factor productivity Abstract This article presents multi-output, multi-input total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates in agriculture for 88 countries over the 1970,2001 period, estimated with both stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and the more commonly employed data envelopment analysis (DEA). We find results with SFA to be more plausible than with DEA, and use them to analyze trends across countries and the determinants of TFP growth in developing countries. The central finding is that policy and institutional variables, including public agricultural expenditure and proagricultural price policy reforms, are significant correlates of TFP growth. The most significant geographic correlate of TFP growth is distance to the nearest OECD country. [source]

IS CORPORATE R&D INVESTMENT IN HIGH-TECH SECTORS MORE EFFECTIVE?

CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 3 2010
RAQUEL ORTEGA-ARGILÉS
This paper discusses the link between R&D and productivity across the European industrial and service sectors. The empirical analysis is based on both the European sectoral OECD data and on a unique micro-longitudinal database consisting of 532 top European R&D investors. The main conclusions are as follows. First, the R&D stock has a significant positive impact on labor productivity; this general result is largely consistent with previous literature in terms of the sign, the significance, and the magnitude of the estimated coefficients. More interestingly, both at sectoral and firm levels the R&D coefficient increases monotonically (both in significance and magnitude) when we move from the low-tech to the medium- and high-tech sectors. This outcome means that corporate R&D investment is more effective in the high-tech sectors and this may need to be taken into account when designing policy instruments (subsidies, fiscal incentives, etc.) in support of private R&D. However, R&D investment is not the sole source of productivity gains; technological change embodied in gross investment is of comparable importance on aggregate and is the main determinant of productivity increase in the low-tech sectors. Hence, an economic policy aiming to increase productivity in the low-tech sectors should support overall capital formation. [source]

Labor productivity of small and large manufacturing firms: the case of Taiwan

ON FINANCE AS A THEORY OF TFP, CROSS-INDUSTRY PRODUCTIVITY DIFFERENCES, AND ECONOMIC RENTS,

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
Andrés Erosa
We develop a theory of capital-market imperfections to study how the ability to enforce contracts affects resource allocation across entrepreneurs of different productivities, and across industries with different needs for external financing. The theory implies that countries with a poor ability to enforce contracts are characterized by the use of inefficient technologies, low aggregate TFP, large differences in labor productivity across industries, and large employment shares in industries with low productivity. These implications are supported by the empirical evidence. The theory also suggests that entrepreneurs have a vested interest in maintaining a status quo with low enforcement. [source]

Performance Impact of the Elimination of Direct Labor Variance Reporting: A Field Study

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 4 2002
Rajiv D. Banker
Using a field study approach, we examine two competing perspectives on direct labor variance reporting: some argue that direct labor variance reporting is costly and cumbersome, and should be eliminated; whereas others contend that without direct labor variance information, managers will not be able to monitor workers effectively, causing workers to shirk and worker productivity to decline. Specifically, we investigate the productivity and quality impacts of eliminating direct labor variance reporting with panel data containing 36 months of data from seven experimental plants that eliminated direct labor variance reporting and 11 control plants that did not. The experimental plants experienced a significant decline in labor productivity compared to the control plants. Also, the experimental plants showed an improvement in product quality, indicating that workers reallocate their efforts to other tasks as a result of the change in the information set available to evaluate them. [source]

Growth dynamics of dairy processing firms in the European Union

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3-4 2010
Cornelis Gardebroek
EU dairy processing industry; Dynamic panel data; Firm growth Abstract The structure of the dairy processing industry in the European Union has changed enormously in recent decades. In many countries, the industry is characterized by a few large companies with a big market share accompanied by many small processors that often produce for niche markets. This article investigates which factors relate to growth of dairy processing firms. Using a unique 10-year panel data set and recently developed dynamic panel data estimators, the growth process of dairy processors is investigated for six rather diverse European countries. The data structure and the estimation method allow for dealing with endogeneity issues in an appropriate way. Firm size growth measured in total assets is found to be affected by firm size, firm age, and financial variables. Growth in number of employees is only affected by firm age and lagged labor productivity. Implications for these results are given in the final section of the article. [source]

The impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality: a case study in China

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
Nong Zhu
Migration; Poverty; Inequality; China Abstract Large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income. This article examines the impact of rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of Hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey. Since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income, we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income, poverty, and inequality would have been in the absence of migration. Our results show that, by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture, migration leads to an increase in rural income. In contrast to many studies that suggest that the increasing share of nonfarm income in total income widens inequality, this article offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons: (1) migration is rational self-selection,farmers with higher expected return in agricultural activities and/or in local nonfarm activities choose to remain in the countryside while those with higher expected return in urban nonfarm sectors migrate; (2) households facing binding constraints of land supply are more likely to migrate; (3) poorer households benefit disproportionately from migration. [source]

TheConvergence of the Italian Regions and Unemployment: Theory and Evidence

JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2002
Gaetano Carmeci
We explore the links between the halt of the convergence process of Italian regions at the beginning of the 1970s and the increase in regional unemployment dispersion. We consider a neoclassical exogenous growth model with an imperfect labor market and show that during the transitional dynamics the imperfections of the labor market negatively influence the output growth rate. In particular, the model implies that centralized bargaining is likely to set a national minimum wage that is too high with respect to the labor productivity of the less developed regions, resulting in a negative impact on their per capita output growth. We test the implications of the model on a regional panel data set using the GMM framework. Both our market distortion measure and the unemployment rate are found to significantly lower the growth rate of per capita output. [source]

Institutional constraints on organizations: the case of Spanish car dealerships

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2009
Benito Arruñada
We study the effect of organizational choice and institutions on the performance of Spanish car dealerships. Using outlet-level data from 1994, we find that vertically integrated dealerships showed substantially lower labor productivity, higher labor costs and lower profitability than franchised ones. Despite these gaps in performance, no vertically integrated outlet was separated until 1994, yet the few outlets that were eventually separated systematically improved their performance. We argue that the conversion of integrated outlets into franchised ones involved significant transaction costs, due to an institutional environment favoring permanent, highly unionized employment relations. In line with this argument, we find that the observed separations occurred in distribution networks that underwent marked reductions in worker unionization rates, following the legalization of temporary labor contracts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Productivity Spillovers from FDI in Malaysian Manufacturing: Evidence from Micro-panel Data,

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009
Noor Aini Khalifah
C23; F23; L6 Using an establishment-level panel dataset for the Malaysian manufacturing industries for 2000,2004, we argue that differences in the proxies and degrees of foreign shareholdings in measuring foreign presence lead to opposite signs and/or significance of spillover effects. The results show significant evidence of positive productivity spillovers to local establishments in the same industry, based on a broad measure of foreign presence. However, there is no evidence of positive spillover when employment share is used as a proxy for foreign presence. Furthermore, significant negative spillover effects are related to higher employment shares of wholly foreign-owned establishments. Although there is no significant difference in labor productivity between wholly foreign-owned and locally-owned establishments, both majority and minority foreign-owned establishments have significantly lower levels of labor productivity than locally-owned establishments in Malaysia. [source]

Output and Productivity Performance of Hong Kong and Singapore's Transport and Communications Sector, 1990 to 2005,

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 1 2009
Boon L. Lee
C430; D290; L910; L960; O570 This paper uses the industry of origin approach to analyze value added and labor productivity outcomes arising from progressive liberalization of government and from statutory board control of transport and communications in Singapore. The paper compares these outcomes with those from the market-orientated, more privatized transport and communications sector in Hong Kong, for the benchmark year 2004 and a review period from 1990 to 2005. The study is among the first to carefully compare labor productivity in specific sectors between the two countries. Although Singapore generally recorded higher levels of labor productivity, there was some catch-up by Hong Kong in the later part of the review period. There was also substantial variation in labor productivity performance within sectoral branches in the two sectors. The study suggests there is some evidence that the different political,economic structures and policy approaches to deregulation and liberalization played a role in determining productivity performance in the transport and communications sectors in Singapore and Hong Kong. The analysis infers a potential, increasing focus on privatization as the driving force for further liberalization of the transport and communications sector in Singapore. [source]

Productivity and Comparative Advantage in Rice Agriculture in South-East Asia Since 1870,

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 4 2004
Pierre Van Der Eng
Rice long dominated the agricultural economies of South-East Asia. Given the economic predominance of agriculture, the development of rice production had a significant bearing on the economies in the region. This article explains why the countries of mainland South-East Asia long dominated the international rice market. It quantifies labor productivity in rice production and argues that simple, low-cost and labor-extensive, but low-yielding production technology allowed farmers in mainland South-East Asia to achieve significantly higher levels of labor product-ivity than in the more densely populated rice-producing areas in South-East Asia and Japan. High levels of labor productivity were a major source of comparative advantage in rice production for Burma, Thailand and Southern Vietnam. [source]

An Examination of Labor Productivity Growth and Structural Changes in the Singapore Labor Force,

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 3 2002
Chong-Yah Lim
This paper ,rst examines the sources of growth in the Singapore economy by decomposing real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth into two components. It is found that, for the period 1974,1999, labor productivity was a signi,cant source of economic growth in Singapore. Conversely, the contribution of the rate of change in employment ratio was only of secondary importance. On further decomposition, the rate of change in employment ratio was due mainly to rate of change in population age-structure ratio and rate of change in labor-force participation rate. Growth patterns of the labor force were examined after it has been segregated according to gender, citizenship and age group independently. Labor productivity growth was highest in the transport, storage and communication sector, while labor productivity growth was lowest in the ,nancial, insurance, real estate and business services sector. [source]

The Equilibrium Yen,Dollar Rate: 1976,91

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Anthony De Carvalho
This paper presents a definition of the equilibrium exchange rate that is based on a modified version of purchasing power parity (PPP) for traded goods. Employing constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production functions and data from 28 three-digit international standard industrial classification (ISIC) manufacturing industries, the equilibrium Yen-Dollar rate is calculated for the period between 1976 and 1991 (a time in which the Yen appreciated markedly against the Dollar) showing that the actual Yen-Dollar rate closely tracked the equilibrium rate over that time. The results suggest that strong growth in Japanese labor productivity, coupled with Japan's relatively low capital-labor elasticity of sub-stitution, were the main contributors to the Yen's long-run appreciation. [source]