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Marginal Product (marginal + product)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting100%

Selected Abstracts

IQ IN THE PRODUCTION FUNCTION: EVIDENCE FROM IMMIGRANT EARNINGS

ECONOMIC INQUIRY, Issue 3 2010
GARETT JONES
We show that a country's average IQ score is a useful predictor of the wages that immigrants from that country earn in the United States, whether or not one adjusts for immigrant education. Just as in numerous microeconomic studies, 1 IQ point predicts 1% higher wages, suggesting that IQ tests capture an important difference in cross-country worker productivity. In a cross-country development accounting exercise, about one-sixth of the global inequality in log income can be explained by the effect of large, persistent differences in national average IQ on the private marginal product of labor. This suggests that cognitive skills matter more for groups than for individuals. (JEL J24, J61, O47) [source]

Unemployment, growth and taxation in industrial countries

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 30 2000
Francesco Daveri
To the layman, the upward trend in European unemployment is related to the slowdown of economic growth. We argue that the layman's view is correct. The increase in European unemployment and the slowdown in economic growth are related, because they stem from a common cause: an excessively rapid growth in the cost of labour. In Europe, labour costs have gone up for many reasons, but one is particularly easy to identify: higher taxes on labour. If wages are set by strong and decentralized trade unions, an increase in labour taxes is shifted onto higher real wages. This has two effects. First, it reduces labour demand, and thus creates unemployment. Secondly, as firms substitute capital for labour, the marginal product of capital falls; over long periods of time, this in turn diminishes the incentive to invest and to grow. The data strongly support this view. According to our estimates, the observed rise of 14 percentage points in labour tax rates between 1965 and 1995 in the EU could account for a rise in EU unemployment of roughly 4 percentage points, a reduction of the investment share of output of about 3 percentage points, and a growth slowdown of about 0.4 percentage points a year. [source]

Damage Control Productivity: An Input Damage Abatement Approach

JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2001
Alfons Oude Lansink
This paper compares the value of the marginal product of three different pesticides from different specifications of the production function. The specifications are the output damage abatement specification proposed by Lichtenberg and Zilberman, a general input damage abatement specification and a traditional production function. These specifications are estimated on panel data of specialised Dutch arable farms over the period 1989,1992, using Generalised Maximum Entropy estimation. Results of the input damage abatement specification show that pesticides have different impacts on individual productive inputs, although statistical evidence is weak. The output damage abatement specification produces statistically more significant relations, but imposes restrictions that are only partly supported by the data. It is also found that estimation of a quadratic traditional production function, that treats damage abatement inputs in the same way as productive inputs, does not lead to over estimation of the value of the marginal product as previous authors have hypothesised. [source]

Is there a managerial life cycle?

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 7 2006
Evidence from the NFL
We use data from the NFL over 1920,2004 to examine the relationship between age and managerial performance controlling for other relevant influences. Our results indicate that age enhances performance up to a point at which increasing age predicts diminished performance,a managerial life cycle. Moreover, rates of change in the life cycle are relatively gradual, which is consistent with gradual changes in the marginal product of human capital and depreciation rates for human capital rather than levels that are fixed for long periods. With a lag of about 7,10 years, the effects are very similar to those found between age and athletic performance in previous studies by Fair. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Understanding Economic Crises: The Great Depression and the 2008 Recession

THE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 2010
LEE E. OHANIAN
Economic crises, involving large and persistent declines in output and employment, are puzzles, particularly in developed countries with economies that typically function at a high level. This article analyses the Great Depression and the 2008 recession using recent developments in business cycle diagnostic procedures, and finds that the key to both episodes is understanding labour market distortions that resulted in the marginal product of labour being much higher than the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure. This finding stands in sharp contrast to the received wisdom, which focuses on the role of banking crises and capital market distortions. The article also discusses possible hypotheses for these labour market distortions. [source]