nep-eff New Economics Papers
on Efficiency and Productivity
Issue of 2019‒08‒19
twenty papers chosen by
  1. Corporate Governance and Efficiency of Rural and Community Banks (RCBs) in Ghana By OTENG-ABAYIE, ERIC Fosu; Affram, Anthony; Mensah, Henry Kofi
  2. The Effects of Access to Credit on Productivity: Separating Technological Changes from Changes in Technical Efficiency By Jimi, Nusrat Abedin; Nikolov, Plamen; Malek, Mohammad Abdul; Kumbhakar, Subal C.
  3. Does Import Competition Reduce Domestic Innovation? Evidence from the 'China Stock' and Firm-Level Data on Canadian Manufacturing By Myeongwan Kim
  4. This paper examines the marginal effects of temperature on the growth rate and variability in growth rate of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of a country, as measured by its production efficiency relative to a stochastic frontier. Using panel data for 168 countries for the period 1950-2014 to estimate a one-step stochastic frontier function, we find that temperature has a concave relationship with the growth rate of production efficiency and with the variability in this growth rate. We observe that hotter than the average temperature is not only detrimental to production efficiency growth but also makes the growth less stable than otherwise and these effects are larger in very hot countries with average annual temperature greater than 25 oC. More importantly, we observe that the detrimental marginal effects of higher temperature depend on the level of economic development of a country they are larger for poor countries relative to rich countries. Our findings have implications for the specification of climate damage functions in integrated assessment models and estimates of country-specific social cost of carbon. By Surender Kumar; Madhu Khanna
  5. The Pre-1914 UK Productivity Slowdown: A Reappraisal By Crafts, Nicholas; Mills, Terence C.
  6. Testing The Quiet Life Hypothesis in the African Banking Industry By Simplice A. Asongu, Phd; Nicholas M. Odhiambo
  7. Exploiting Information from Singletons in Panel Data Analysis: A GMM Approach By Bruno, Randolph Luca; Magazzini, Laura; Stampini, Marco
  8. Dutch disease dynamics reconsidered By Hilde C. Bjørnland; Leif Anders Thorsrud; Ragnar Torvik
  9. The Millenium Droughts and Australian Agricultural Productivity Performance: A Nonparametric Analysis By Chambers, Robert G.; Sheng, Yu; Pieralli, Simone
  10. Agricultural Productivity Adjusted for Environmental Bads in Great Plains: Redux By Khanal, Badri; Fulginiti, Lilyan E.; Perrin, Richard K.
  11. Farm Efficiency Under Risk: How Does Risk Influence the Efficiency Frontier? By Bergtold, Jason S.; Yeager, Elizabeth A.; Nalunga, Asha
  12. Natural Disasters and The Spatial Distribution of Labor and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia By Xu, Shang; Klaiber, Allen; Miteva, Daniela A.
  13. Food Security in Niger in 2050: What Role Does Climate Change, Agricultural Productivity, and Population Play? By Kabir, Kayenat; Hertel, Thomas W.; Baldos, Uris Lantz C.
  14. Weather Impacts on Agricultural Production Efficiency: Evidence from Kansas Wheat Farmers By Chen, Bowen; Dennis, Elliott J.; Featherstone, Allen M.
  15. Preserving biodiversity for greater productivity: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial of Oil Palm Producers in Colombia By Salazar, Lina; Fahsbender, Jossie; Avila, Josue
  16. Water efficiency in high-yield irrigated corn fields in the Western U.S. Corn Belt By De Figueiredo Silva, Felipe; Fulginiti, Lilyan E.; Perrin, Richard K.
  17. Induced Innovation in South American Agriculture: Acemoglu’s Directed Technical Change By Queiroz, Pedro; Fulginiti, Lilyan E.; Perrin, Richard K.
  18. Modelling the Green Knowledge Production Function with Latent Group Structures for OECD countries By Saptorshee Kanto Chakraborty; Massimiliano Mazzanti
  19. Spillover Effects of Agricultural Productivity: Evidence from Genetically Modified Cotton Expansion in India By Baylis, Kathy; Crost, Benjamin; Pullabhotla, Hemant K.
  20. PROFIT-MAXIMIZING NITROGEN RATES FOR CORN PRODUCTION AND TILLAGE SYSTEMS USING RANDOM PARAMETER RESPONSE FUNCTIONS By Villacis Aveiga, Alexis H.; Alwang, Jeffrey; Delgado, Jorge
  1. By: OTENG-ABAYIE, ERIC Fosu; Affram, Anthony; Mensah, Henry Kofi
    Abstract: Corporate governance crises that occur in the banking sector normally cripple economies and bring many hardships to individuals, corporate entities, communities, and the nation at large. In this study, we sought to examine the level of technical efficiency and productivity growth of rural and community banks (RCBs) and the impact of corporate governance indicators on the RCBs' efficiency performance in Ghana. A sample of 70 out of 140 RCBs was selected based on the ARB Apex Bank's performance ratings and data availability. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to determine the technical efficiency scores of the selected RCBs. In the second stage of the analysis, these computed efficiency scores were regressed on the corporate governance variables to assess the effects of the latter. The findings from the DEA approach show that 11% to 20% of the sampled RCBs in Ghana operate close to the efficiency frontier, whereas the majority - about 65% to 81% - underperformed within the study period of 2007 to 2013. The study further established that the number of board members, frequency of board meetings, and corporate social responsibility have significant influence on RCB efficiency.
    Keywords: Corporate governance, efficiency, Rural banks, Ghana, DEA
    JEL: G2 G21
    Date: 2018–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:94665&r=all
  2. By: Jimi, Nusrat Abedin (State University of New York); Nikolov, Plamen (State University of New York); Malek, Mohammad Abdul (Kyoto University); Kumbhakar, Subal C. (Binghamton University, New York)
    Abstract: Improving productivity among microenterprises is important, especially in low-income countries where market imperfections are pervasive, and resources are scarce. Relaxing credit constraints can increase the productivity of microenterprises. Using a field experiment involving agricultural microenterprises in Bangladesh, we estimated the impact of access to credit on the overall productivity of rice farmers and disentangled the total effect into technological change (frontier shift) and technical efficiency changes. We found that relative to the baseline rice output per decimal, access to credit resulted in, on average, approximately a 14 percent increase in yield, holding all other inputs constant. After decomposing the total effect into the frontier shift and efficiency improvement, we found that, on average, around 11 percent of the increase in output came from changes in technology, or frontier shift, while the remaining 3 percent was attributed to improvements in technical efficiency. The efficiency gain was higher for modern hybrid rice varieties, and almost zero for traditional rice varieties. Within the treatment group, the effect was greater among pure tenant and mixed-tenant microenterprise households compared with microenterprises that only cultivated their own land.
    Keywords: field experiment, microfinance, credit, efficiency, productivity, farmers, South Asia
    JEL: E22 H81 Q12 D2 O12 O16
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12514&r=all
  3. By: Myeongwan Kim
    Abstract: A key economic issue in Canada is the declining Business Enterprise Research and Development in manufacturing since the early 2000s. Accompanying this, the total factor productivity (TFP) growth in manufacturing slowed after 2000. However, there has not been a definitive explanation for these trends. To deepen our understanding of this phenomenon, we focus on the increasing Chinese import share in the total domestic absorption in Canadian manufacturing since the early 2000s, which appears to be driven by positive supply shocks within Chinese manufacturing. Based on a firm-level database covering all incorporated firms in Canadian manufacturing, we find that rising Chinese import competition led to declines in R&D expenditure and TFP growth within firms but reallocated employment towards more productive firms and induced less productive firms to exit. The negative within-effects were pronounced for firms that were initially smaller, less profitable, and less productive. These firms also experienced declines in their profit margins due to rising Chinese import competition while larger and better-performing firms did not. Our estimates imply that rising Chinese import competition can explain about 7 per cent of the total decline of $1.36 billion (2007 CAD) in R&D expenditure in Canadian manufacturing between 2005 and 2010. Although it led to declines in TFP within firms, the positive reallocation effects more than offset the negative within-effect. Had there been no increase in Chinese import competition between 2005 and 2010, TFP in Canadian manufacturing would have declined by 1.26 per cent per year instead of the actual 1.09 per cent per year over this period.
    Keywords: China Shock, Canada, Imports, Productivity, Innovation
    JEL: O32 O51 O53 L60
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:1711&r=all
  4. By: Surender Kumar (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics); Madhu Khanna (Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 1301, W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801)
    Keywords: Temperature, Production efficiency growth, Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), Non-linear effects
    JEL: E23 O13 Q54 Q56
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cde:cdewps:298&r=all
  5. By: Crafts, Nicholas (University of Warwick); Mills, Terence C. (Loughborough University)
    Abstract: This paper re-examines UK productivity growth in the decades before World War I using a new dataset compiled by Thomas and Dimsdale (2017). We find that the productivity slowdown of the early 20th century was quite modest and does not deserve to be called a climacteric. A more serious slowdown in labour productivity growth occurred in the 1870s. Neither of these episodes should be regarded as a precedent for the current severe deterioration in UK productivity performance. Nor should a late-Victorian productivity slowdown be attributed to the end of the steam age despite the popularity of this belief
    Keywords: climacteric ; growth accounting ; Hodrick-Prescott filter ; productivity slowdown
    JEL: N13 O47
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1221&r=all
  6. By: Simplice A. Asongu, Phd; Nicholas M. Odhiambo (Department of Economics, University of South Africa)
    Abstract: The Quiet Life Hypothesis (QLH) is the pursuit of less efficiency by firms. In this study, we assess if powerful banks in the African banking industry are increasing financial access. The QLH is therefore consistent with the pursuit of financial intermediation inefficiency by large banks. To investigate the hypothesis, we first estimate the Lerner index. Then, using Two Stage Least Squares, we assess the effect of the Lerner index on financial access proxied by loan price and loan quantity. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks from 42 countries for the period 2001-2011. The findings support the QLH, although quiet life is driven by the below-median Lerner index sub- sample. Policy implications are discussed.
    Keywords: Financial Access; Bank performance; Africa.
    JEL: R10
    Date: 2018–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbn:wps208:3003&r=all
  7. By: Bruno, Randolph Luca (University College London); Magazzini, Laura (University of Verona); Stampini, Marco (Inter-American Development Bank)
    Abstract: We propose a novel procedure, built within a Generalized Method of Moments framework, which exploits unpaired observations (singletons) to increase the efficiency of longitudinal fixed effect estimates. The approach allows increasing estimation efficiency, while properly tackling the bias due to unobserved time-invariant characteristics. We assess its properties by means of Monte Carlo simulations, and apply it to a traditional Total Factor Productivity regression, showing efficiency gains of approximately 8-9 percent.
    Keywords: singletons, panel data, efficient estimation, unobserved heterogeneity, GMM
    JEL: C23 C33 C51
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12465&r=all
  8. By: Hilde C. Bjørnland; Leif Anders Thorsrud; Ragnar Torvik
    Abstract: In this paper we develop the first model to incorporate the dynamic productivity consequences of both the spending effect and the resource movement effect of oil abundance. We show that doing so dramatically alters the conclusions drawn from earlier models of learning by doing (LBD) and the Dutch disease. In particular, the resource movement effect suggests that the growth effects of natural resources are likely to be positive, turning previous growth results in the literature relying on the spending effect on their head. We motivate the relevance of our approach by the example of a major oil producer, Norway. Empirically we find that the effects of an increase in the price of oil may resemble results found in the earlier Dutch disease literature, while the effects of increased oil activity increases productivity in most industries. Therefore, models that only focus on windfall gains due to increased spending potential from higher oil prices, would conclude - incorrectly based on our analysis - that the resource sector cannot be an engine of growth.
    Keywords: Dutch disease, resource movements, learning by doing, analytics of multidimensional dynamic systems, time-varying VAR model
    JEL: C32 E32 F41 Q33
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2019-55&r=all
  9. By: Chambers, Robert G.; Sheng, Yu; Pieralli, Simone
    Keywords: Productivity Analysis
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291204&r=all
  10. By: Khanal, Badri; Fulginiti, Lilyan E.; Perrin, Richard K.
    Keywords: Productivity Analysis
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291184&r=all
  11. By: Bergtold, Jason S.; Yeager, Elizabeth A.; Nalunga, Asha
    Keywords: Production Economics
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291148&r=all
  12. By: Xu, Shang; Klaiber, Allen; Miteva, Daniela A.
    Keywords: Labor and Human Capital
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:290986&r=all
  13. By: Kabir, Kayenat; Hertel, Thomas W.; Baldos, Uris Lantz C.
    Keywords: Demand and Price Analysis
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:290784&r=all
  14. By: Chen, Bowen; Dennis, Elliott J.; Featherstone, Allen M.
    Keywords: Production Economics
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291144&r=all
  15. By: Salazar, Lina; Fahsbender, Jossie; Avila, Josue
    Keywords: Production Economics
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291169&r=all
  16. By: De Figueiredo Silva, Felipe; Fulginiti, Lilyan E.; Perrin, Richard K.
    Keywords: Production Economics
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291135&r=all
  17. By: Queiroz, Pedro; Fulginiti, Lilyan E.; Perrin, Richard K.
    Keywords: Production Economics
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291177&r=all
  18. By: Saptorshee Kanto Chakraborty (University of Ferrara, Italy); Massimiliano Mazzanti (University of Ferrara; SEEDS, Italy)
    Abstract: We explore the green knowledge production function and human capital spillovers in the OECD region using a latent group structure. The number of groups and the group membership are both unknown, we determine these unknowns using a penalized regression technique in the presence of cross-sectional dependence in error terms and nonstationarity. We find substantial heterogenous groups classified under three distinctive groups and their efficient estimates. We try to model the green knowledge production function with Latent-Group Structures using PPC- base method with one unobserved global non-stationary factor, we find heterogeneous behaviour in green technologies using a Cup-Lasso estimate. Human capital and expenditure in Research and Development plays an important part in our findings
    Keywords: Green Innovation, Human Capital Spillover, Gross Research and Development, OECD, C-Lasso
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:srt:wpaper:0719&r=all
  19. By: Baylis, Kathy; Crost, Benjamin; Pullabhotla, Hemant K.
    Keywords: International Development
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291048&r=all
  20. By: Villacis Aveiga, Alexis H.; Alwang, Jeffrey; Delgado, Jorge
    Keywords: Production Economics
    Date: 2019–06–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea19:291137&r=all
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