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on Efficiency and Productivity |
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Issue of 2014‒02‒15
twelve papers chosen by |
| By: | Timmer, Marcel P.; Lashitew, Addisu A.; Inklaar, Robert (Groningen University) |
| Abstract: | When capital and labor are not allocated to the more productive firms, aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) suffers. Can this explain observed productivity differences across countries? We estimate manufacturing TFP levels for 52 developing countries and decompose it into a part due to misallocation and a part due to (residual) technology differences. The results show that removing misallocation would increase TFP by an average of 60 percent, but productivity gaps relative to the US remain large. The degree of misallocation is uncorrelated with observed productivity. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:rugggd:gd-143&r=eff |
| By: | Bertschek, Irene; Niebel, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Mobile internet access allows for flexibility with respect to working time and working place. We analyse whether employees' use of mobile internet access improves firms' labour productivity. Our data set comprises 2460 German firms and refers to the year 2010, when mobile internet started its diffusion process to firms on a large scale. The econometric analysis shows that firms' labour productivity significantly increases with the share of employees with mobile internet access. However, an instrumental variable approach reveals that mobile internet use does not cause higher labour productivity. -- |
| Keywords: | Mobile Internet,Labour Productivity,Firm-Level Data |
| JEL: | D22 L20 O33 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13118&r=eff |
| By: | Auci, Sabrina; Vignani, Donatella |
| Abstract: | Climate changes, associated to atmospheric accumulation of greenhouse gases, could alter level of temperature at the surface, rainfalls and regional water supplies. There are many areas of the Earth that will cope with a rapid increasing of warming at the surface and with an extremization of weather conditions. Although many economic sectors are influenced, agriculture is the most susceptible as weather heavily affects crop production trends, yield variability and reduction of areas suitable to be cultivated. Climate change effects represent a “challenge” that European agriculture has to face in the immediate future. The aim of our work is to analyze the economic impacts of climate change on agricultural sector in Italy at regional scale (NUTS2) in the light of mitigation policies undertaken by Italy in accordance with the commitments made by the EU Policy in the struggle against climate change. Using the stochastic frontier approach, we investigate on the Italian Regions efficiency in the period 2000-2010. Considering that inefficiency could be influenced by two main meteorological factors – rainfall and minimum temperature– we find that rainfall variable has a positive impact on efficiency while minimum temperature variable reduces the efficiency of harvested production. |
| Keywords: | Climate change effects, agricultural sector, mitigation and adaptation, Italian Regions efficiency, stochastic frontier approach |
| JEL: | Q10 Q54 |
| Date: | 2014–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:53500&r=eff |
| By: | Hottenrott, Hanna; Rexhäuser, Sascha; Veugelers, Reinhilde |
| Abstract: | This study investigates productivity effects to firms introducing new environmental technologies. The literature on within-firm organisational change and productivity suggests that firms can get higher productivity effects from adopting new technologies if complementary organisational changes are adopted simultaneously. Such complementarity effects may be of critical importance for the case of adoption of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement technologies. The adoption of these technologies is often induced by public authorities to limit social costs of climate change, whereas the private returns are much less obvious. We find empirical support for complementarity between green technology adoption and organisational change for a sample of firms located in Germany. The adoption of CO2 reducing and sustainable technologies innovations is associated with lower productivity. The simultaneous implementation of organisational innovations, however, increases the returns to the adoption of green technologies. -- |
| Keywords: | technical change,environmental innovation,organisational change,productivity |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:12043r&r=eff |
| By: | George Papageorgiou; George Halkos |
| Abstract: | This paper computes and analyses for the first time environmental efficiencies in waste generation of 160 European regions in NUTS 2 level in seven European countries. For this reason different Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model formulations are used modeling the pollutant in the form of waste generation as a regular output and as a regular input. In the latter case we also use the notion of ecoefficiency. The empirical findings reveal environmental inefficiencies among the regions indicating the lack of a uniform regional environmental policy among the European countries. This finding is observed not only between countries but also between regions in the same country, implying the need for implementation of appropriate municipal environmental policies in waste management. |
| Keywords: | Environmental efficiency, Waste generation, European regions, Data Envelopment Analysis |
| JEL: | C6 O13 O52 Q50 Q53 Q56 R11 |
| Date: | 2014–02–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aue:wpaper:1401&r=eff |
| By: | Grodea, Mariana |
| Abstract: | Taking into consideration the new Common Agricultural Policy (2014 -2020, for the milk sector, which will have as main component the milk quota removal after 2014, the present paper makes a comparative analysis of the indicators from the milk chain links (agriculture, processing, trade, consumption) from Romania and the EU-27 member states in the period 2009-2012, in order to reveal the performance level and Romania’s position among these European countries, as well as the modalities to narrow the productivity gaps along the Romanian milk chain compared to the European Union, having in view the domestic supply improvement and meeting the consumers’ needs. In this context, an investigation was made by each link in the chain, at the level of milk production, raw milk collection for processing, milk processing, distribution and consumption, in close connection with milk quality and price evolution; certain variants and measures were designed to narrow the gaps of productivity and institutional organization of the milk chain in Romania. |
| Keywords: | cow herds, milk production, dairy cow farm size, prices, quality |
| JEL: | Q1 |
| Date: | 2013–11–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:53458&r=eff |
| By: | Trevor Tombe (University of Calgary) |
| Abstract: | Poor countries have low agricultural productivity relative to other sectors, yet predominantly consume domestically produced food. The literature on agriculture's low productivity typically abstracts from trade to focus on domestic distortions. This leaves open important questions: Why do poor countries import so little food? Does trade contribute to cross-country aggregate and agricultural productivity differences? I answer these questions with a rich, quantitative model applied to many countries. I show trade amplifies the costs of domestic distortions. I also measure trade costs; they are large in poor countries and help account for productivity differences across countries. |
| Keywords: | Food Problem; Productivity; Dual Economy Models; Trade; Agriculture |
| JEL: | F1 F41 O11 |
| Date: | 2014–02–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clg:wpaper:2014-35&r=eff |
| By: | Mutonyi, Sarah; Gyau, Amos |
| Abstract: | Globalization and increasing population of middle income classes in developing countries has led to increased market opportunities. These markets are associated with demand for traceability, food safety and quality standards (Webber and Labaste, 2010). This requires the chains to be competitive and ability to manage and evaluate the performance of the supply chain becomes paramount. Performance measurement is defined as the process of quantifying efficiency and effectiveness of an action. In the recent literature, performance measurement has gained attention in the agri-food chains. Different methods have been proposed in marketing and supply chain management literature to measure supply chain performance such as Activity-Based Costing (ABC), Balanced Scorecard, Economic Value Added (EVA), Multi-criteria Analysis (MCA), Life-cycle Analysis (LCA), Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Supply Chain Council’s (SCOR model). Despite the existence of these measurement metrics, there is lack of consensus on what determines the performance of supply chains which complicates the selection of one measurement system in agrifood chains. The measures may not often be applicable for small and medium size agribusiness firms especially producer organizations in developing countries. Since they are not well structured, do not often collect information which are often needed to feed the complex models. We therefore propose a conceptual model for measuring marketing performance based upon five constructs: effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, food quality and customer satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa140:163339&r=eff |
| By: | Deluna, Roperto Jr; Cruz, Edgardo |
| Abstract: | This study was conducted to investigate the issue of what Philippine merchandise trade flows would be if countries operated at the frontier using gravity model. The study sought to estimate the coefficients of the gravity equation. The estimated coefficients were used to estimate merchandise export potentials and technical efficiency of each country in the sample and these were also aggregated to measure impact of country groups. Result of the estimated coefficients of the gravity equation shows that merchandise export flows of the Philippines to trading partners is significantly positively affected by income and market size of the importing partner. The income elasticity of merchandise exports is 0.69%. A 1% increase in market size increases export flow by 0.24%. Distance was estimated to reduce export flow by 1.22% in every 1% increase in distance. The technical efficiency for all sample countries is not so high; it ranged from 38 to 42% with standard deviation of 30. The most efficient countries in the sample which recorded more than 80% efficiency were Singapore (100%), New Zealand (97%), HongKong (97%), USA (96%), Australia (96%), Canada (96%), UK (93%), Denmark (93%), Japan (87%), Malaysia (85%) and S. Korea (81%). Countries with larger markets emerge as high export potentials such as USA, China and Japan with potential ranging from 10 to 30 Trillion US dollars. These potential has been changing within the period. Result of technical inefficiency model reveals that these potential is increased by membership of the Philippines to ASEAN, APEC and WTO. Reduction of corruption and freer labor market in the importing country enhances export potential of Philippine merchandise exports. Commonality of language also enhances these potential. |
| Keywords: | Merchandise exports, Gravity, Stochastic frontier, Philippine export potential |
| JEL: | C1 C13 F00 F1 F13 F14 F15 |
| Date: | 2014–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:53580&r=eff |
| By: | Hristos Doucouliagos (Deakin University, Austratlia); Martin Paldam (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark) |
| Abstract: | The authors have previously surveyed the AEL, aid (empirical) effectiveness literature, using the technique of meta-analysis. We reached the result that the small positive effect of aid on growth found in the average study is mostly a publication selection bias. This present study concentrates on the new literature from 2007 onward which is divided into: Period (A) 2007-08: where the AEL showed aid ineffectiveness. Period (B) 2009-12: where the results are better. Three hypotheses may explain the upward kink in the results: (i) Aid effectiveness has increased. (ii) A breakthrough has occurred in the models and estimators. (iii) The improvement is an artifact. Unfortunately the data support the third hypothesis only. |
| Keywords: | Aid effectiveness, meta-analysis |
| JEL: | B41 F35 |
| Date: | 2014–02–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aah:aarhec:2014-07&r=eff |
| By: | Haubrich, Joseph G. (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland); Balasubramanyan, Lakshmi (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) |
| Abstract: | This study tries to get a sense of the topography of the regional banking landscape. We focus on bank holding companies and banks with $10 billion to $50 billion in assets and look for factors that potentially explain regional bank health from 2008 to 2013. Our dataset is a combination of bank Call Report data and confidential supervisory data. Our analysis shows that regional banks are not a monolithic group, and different factors explain bank safety and soundness for different types of banks. |
| Keywords: | Regional Banking Organizations; Banks and Banking; Supervisory Ratings |
| JEL: | G21 G28 L25 R11 |
| Date: | 2014–01–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1316&r=eff |
| By: | Pretolani, Roberto; Cavicchioli, Daniele; Cairo, Valentina |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa140:163342&r=eff |