|
on Efficiency and Productivity |
|
Issue of 2006‒11‒04
ten papers chosen by |
| By: | Priit Vahter |
| Abstract: | This paper provides some stylised facts about differences in labour productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) in Estonian firms and about the role of selected determinants of productivity differences. Enterprise level panel data of the whole population of Estonian firms from years 1995-2002 is used. It appears that the variation of productivity indicators in Estonia is much greater than in Western Europe. Although there is a lot of entry and exit of firms, there is not much movement within the productivity distribution of surviving .rms. It is found that both innovation and less concentrated market structure seem to be positively related to higher productivity of firms |
| Keywords: | productivity, competition, innovation, market structure |
| JEL: | G3 L2 O31 O4 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eea:boewps:wp2006-07&r=eff |
| By: | Arnold, Jens Matthias; Mattoo, Aaditya; Narciso, Gaia |
| Abstract: | The authors investigate the relationship between the productivity of African manufacturing firms and their access to services inputs. They use data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for over 1,000 firms in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries to calculate the total factor productivity of firms. The Enterprise Surveys also contain unique measures of firms ' access to communications, electricity, and financial services. The availability of these measures at the firm level, both as subjective and objective indicators, allows the authors to exploit the variation in services performance at the subnational regional level. Furthermore, by using the regional variation in services performance, they are also able to address concerns about the possible endogeneity of the services variables. The results show a significant and positive relationship between firm productivity and service performance in all three services sectors analyzed. The authors thus provide support for the argument that improvements in services industries contribute to enhancing the performance of downstream economic activities, and thus are an essential element of a strategy for promoting growth and reducing poverty. |
| Keywords: | Economic Theory & Research,Education for the Knowledge Economy,Rural Communications,Commodities,Urban Economics |
| Date: | 2006–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4048&r=eff |
| By: | Arnold, Jens; Mattoo, Aaditya; Smarzynska Javorcik, Beata |
| Abstract: | While there is considerable empirical evidence on the impact of liberalizing trade in goods, the effects of services liberalization have not been empirically established. This study examines the link between services sector reforms and the productivity of manufacturing industries relying on services inputs. The results, based on firm-level data from the Czech Republic for the period 1998-2003, show a positive relationship between services sector reform and the performance of domestic firms in downstream manufacturing sectors. When several aspects of services liberalization are considered, namely, the presence of foreign providers, privatization and the level of competition, we find that allowing foreign entry into services industries is the key channel through which services liberalization contributes to improved performance of downstream manufacturing sectors. As most barriers to foreign investment today are not in goods but in services sectors, our findings may strengthen the argument for reform in this area. |
| Keywords: | foreign direct investment; productivity; services liberalization |
| JEL: | D24 F2 L8 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5902&r=eff |
| By: | Mas, Alexandre; Moretti, Enrico |
| Abstract: | We investigate how and why the productivity of a worker varies as a function of the productivity of her co-workers in a group production process. In theory, the introduction of a high productivity worker could lower the effort of incumbent workers because of free riding; or it could increase the effort of incumbent workers because of peer effects induced by social norms, social pressure, or learning. Using scanner level data, we measure high frequency, worker-level productivity of checkers for a large grocery chain. Because of the firm's scheduling policy, the timing of within-day changes in personnel is unsystematic, a feature for which we find consistent support in the data. We find strong evidence of positive productivity spillovers from the introduction of highly productive personnel into a shift. A 10% increase in average co-worker permanent productivity is associated with 1.7% increase in a worker's effort. Most of this peer effect arises from low productivity workers benefiting from the presence of high productivity workers. Therefore, the optimal mix of workers in a given shift is the one that maximizes skill diversity. In order to explain the mechanism that generates the peer effect, we examine whether effort depends on workers' ability to monitor one another due to their spatial arrangement, and whether effort is affected by the time workers have previously spent working together. We find that a given worker's effort is positively related to the presence and speed of workers who face him, but not the presence and speed of workers whom he faces (and do not face him). In addition, workers respond more to the presence of co-workers with whom they frequently overlap. These patterns indicate that these individuals are motivated by social pressure and mutual monitoring, and suggest that social preferences can play an important role in inducing effort, even when economic incentives are limited. |
| Keywords: | spillovers |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5870&r=eff |
| By: | Gustafsson, Peter; Segerstrom, Paul |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a trade model with firm-level productivity differences and R&D-driven growth. Trade liberalization causes the least productive firms to exit but also slows the development of new products. The overall effect on productivity growth depends on the size of intertemporal knowledge spillovers in R&D. When these spillovers are relatively weak, then trade liberalization promotes productivity growth in the short run and makes consumers better off in the long run. However, when these spillovers are relatively strong, then trade liberalization retards productivity growth in the short run and makes consumers worse off in the long run. |
| Keywords: | endogenous fimrs; heterogenous firms; international trade; productivity growth; trade liberalization |
| JEL: | F12 F13 O31 O41 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5894&r=eff |
| By: | Hans-Friedrich Eckey; Christian Dreger; Matthias Türck |
| Abstract: | In this paper, the process of productivity convergence is investigated for the enlarged European Union using regional (NUTS-2) data. The Solow model extended by human capital is employed as a workhorse. Alternative strategies are proposed to control for spatial effects. All specifications confirm the presence of convergence with an annual speed between 3 and 3.5 percent towards regional steady states. Furthermore, a geographically weighted regression approach indicates a wide variation in the speed of convergence across the regions, where a higher speed is striking in particular in France and the UK. Clusters of convergence can be identified, where regions with high convergence also have high initial income levels. |
| Keywords: | Solow model, regional convergence, spatial lags, spatial filtering |
| JEL: | C21 O47 R11 R15 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp631&r=eff |
| By: | Raouf, BOUCEKKINE (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Department of Economics); Blanca, MARTINEZ; Cagri, SAGLAM |
| Abstract: | We study an optimal growth model with one-hoss-shay vintage capital, where labor resources can be allocated freely either to production, technology adoption or capital maintenance. Technological progress is partly embodied. Adoption labor increases the level of embodied technical progress. First, we are able to disentangle the amplification-propagation role of maintenance in business fluctuations : in the short run, the response of the model to transitory shocks on total factor productivity in the final good sector are definitely much sharper compared to the counterpart model without maintenance but with the same average depreciation rate. Moreover, the one-hoss shay technology is shown to reinforce this amplification-propagation mechanism. We also find that accelerations in embodied technical progress should be responded by a gradual adoption effort, and capital maintenance should be the preferred instrument in the short run. |
| Keywords: | Technology adoption, Maintenance, Vintage capital, Dynamics |
| JEL: | E22 E32 O40 |
| Date: | 2006–06–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvec:2006030&r=eff |
| By: | Olli Castrén (Corresponding address: European Central Bank, Kaiserstrasse 29, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.); Trevor Fitzpatrick; Matthias Sydow |
| Abstract: | We combine the dynamic dividend-discount model with an accounting-based vector autoregression framework that allows for a decomposition of EU banks'stock returns to cash-flow and expected return news components. The main findings are that while the bulk of the variability of EU banks'stock returns is due to cash-flow shocks, the expected return shocks are relatively more important for larger than for smaller banks. Moroever, variables used in the literature as cash-flow proxies explain a higher share of the cash-flow component of the total excess returns for smaller than for larger EU banks. This suggests that large banks could be more prone to market wide news and events - that in the literature are associated with the expected return news component - as opposed to the bank-specific news, typically assumed to be incorporated in the cash-flow component. JEL Classification: C33, G12, G21. |
| Keywords: | Bank stock return predictability, return decomposition, panel VAR estimation, cash-flow news. |
| Date: | 2006–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20060677&r=eff |
| By: | Antonio Lopes; Luca Giordano |
| Abstract: | The Italian banking system is characterized by deep eciency inequality between banks operating in dierent regions, with northern banks that largely outperform the southern ones. Moreover the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans is signicantly higher in the South than elsewhere. In view of these evidences we asked: is the e- ciency gap of the southern banks (and therefore their lower screening and monitoring ability) the primary source of their higher level of bad loans? Or is the poorer quality of the southern bank loans (due to the adverse macroeconomic environment) that causes lower eciency? The results oer rather concrete evidence in favour of the hypothesis that is a lower managerial eciency which causes an increase in non-performing loans, whereas the eects of exogenous environmental shocks are negligible. As a second point to investigate, we recognize that banks have different risk aversion which dierently aects the choice of input vector and we expressly take into account the capitalization degree (as a buer against the risk) in estimating the bank cost stochastic frontier. |
| Date: | 2006–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ufg:qdsems:12-2006&r=eff |
| By: | Stefano Brusoni (CESPRI-CRORA, Bocconi University and Silvio Tronchetti-Provera Foundation, Milano,Italy.); Elena Cefis (Utrecht School of Economics, Utrecht University and Bergamo University); Luigi Orsenigo (University of Brescia and CESPRI, Bocconi University, Italy) |
| Abstract: | The idea that innovation leads to positive economic performance has become a sort of truism in recent years. However, empirical evidence showing that innovating organizations and countries outperform non-innovating ones remains scant and scattered. In many ways, the jury is still out. First of all, there is still little agreement about what ‘performance’ means. The range of indicators adopted in the literature varies widely: financial performance, market shares, new products introduced into the market, patents, GDP growth, and so on. Second, the time lag between innovative efforts and performance is often so large, and so industry specific, that it remains just very hard to produce reliable estimates. Third, it is still unclear at what level of analysis one should go looking for positive economic performance. Studies exist that look at the relationship between performance and innovation at the level of design teams, projects, firms, networks, industries, and countries. This paper aims at critically reviewing the wide, yet remarkably scattered literature that aims at measuring and explaining the relationship between innovation and performance. It builds upon an extensive review of contributions in economics, management and organisation sciences to identify trends and results that are consistent and robust. In a nutshell, this paper argues that country- and sectoral-level approaches which emphasize the role that knowledge, spillovers and human capital play in fostering economic growth trough innovation need to consider the fundamental role played by competition among heterogeneous organisations in igniting the growth process. In this respect, micro-and firm-level studies can provide useful insights about how competition fosters learning, innovation and ultimately growth. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Growth, Knowledge, Performance, Competition. |
| JEL: | O14 O33 O40 |
| Date: | 2006–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cri:cespri:wp179&r=eff |