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on Efficiency and Productivity |
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Issue of 2021‒10‒18
eleven papers chosen by |
| By: | Wang, Sun Ling; Rada, Nicholas E.; Williams, Ryan C. |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy, Production Economics |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea21:314088&r= |
| By: | Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés |
| Abstract: | Europe has witnessed a considerable labour productivity slowdown in recent decades. Many potential explanations have been proposed to address this productivity ‘puzzle’. However, how the quality of local institutions influences labour productivity has been overlooked by the literature. This article addresses this gap by evaluating how institutional quality affects labour productivity growth and, particularly, its determinants at the regional level during the period 2003–2015. The results indicate that institutional quality influences regions’ labour productivity growth both directly—as improvements in institutional quality drive productivity growth—and indirectly—as the short- and long-run returns of human capital and innovation on labour productivity growth are affected by regional variations in institutional quality. |
| Keywords: | Labour productivity; institutional quality; physical capital; human capital; innovation; regions; Europe; OUP deal |
| JEL: | R14 J01 N0 |
| Date: | 2021–06–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:108915&r= |
| By: | Iglesias Pinedo, Wilman J.; Rocha Junior, Adauto |
| Keywords: | Production Economics, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea21:314064&r= |
| By: | Martin Fleming (The Productivity Institute, The University of Manchester) |
| Keywords: | industrial revolution, productivity, industry 4.0, capital deepening, technological innovation, creative destruction |
| Date: | 2021–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anj:wpaper:010&r= |
| By: | Hutchins, Jared P.; Gong, Yating; Du, Xiaodong |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Production Economics, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea21:313882&r= |
| By: | FREDERIC ANG (Business Economics Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen, The Netherlands); KRISTIAAN KERSTENS (Univ. Lille, CNRS, IESEG School of Management, UMR 9221 - LEM - Lille Economie Management, F-59000 Lille, France) |
| Abstract: | The agricultural sector is currently confronted with the challenge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, whilst maintaining or increasing production. Energy-saving technologies are often proposed as a partial solution, but the evidence on their ability to reduce GHG emissions remains mixed. Production economics provides methodological tools to analyse the nexus of agricultural production, energy use and GHG emissions. Convexity is predominantly maintained in agricultural production economics, despite various theoretical and empirical reasons to question it. Employing a nonconvex, free disposal hull framework, this paper evaluates energy productivity change (the ratio of aggregate output change to energy use change) and GHG emission intensity change (the ratio of GHG emission change to polluting input change) using Hicks-Moorsteen productivity formulations. We consider GHG emissions as by-products of the production process by means of multi-equation modelling. The application focuses on 1,510 Dutch dairy farms for the period of 2010-2019. The results show a positive association between energy productivity change and GHG emission intensity change, which calls into question the potential of on-farm, energy-efficiency-increasing measures to reduce GHG emission intensity. |
| Keywords: | energy, greenhouse gas emissions, productivity, dairy, nonconvexity |
| JEL: | D22 D24 Q12 Q53 Q54 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ies:wpaper:e202109&r= |
| By: | Finocchiaro Castro, Massimo; Guccio, Calogero; Romeo, Domenica |
| Abstract: | In the last few years, countries and commercial firms are increasingly interested in space activities for civil, military, and commercial purposes (Undseth et al., 2020). As it has been shown in NASA report (2019), investment in space program drives to significant economic benefits to the whole society. We propose the first methodological paper to empirically study the efficiency of satellite launches employing the Data Envelopment Analysis input-oriented technique. We show that overall average efficiency is quite low and that it can significantly be improved by studying subsamples of DMUs according to user, purpose, and class of orbit. The most relevant results can be achieved in the communications purpose cluster where the bias corrected efficiency scores tripled with respect to average efficiency level reached by overall estimates. Hence, the scope of satellites seems to affect the mission efficiency and, even more relevant, the future creation of debris. |
| Keywords: | efficiency,space programs,debris,space agencies,satellites |
| JEL: | D24 Q53 R41 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:243123&r= |
| By: | Ogundari, Kolawole |
| Abstract: | The study revisits the causal relationship between agricultural productivity and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis is based on the panel cointegration approach, estimated using the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimators. The study employs a cross-country balanced panel data covering 35 countries from 1981 to 2010. Per capita, gross domestic product is an indicator of economic growth, and the total factor productivity (TFP) index is an agricultural productivity indicator used in the study. The empirical results show the variables have a different integration order based on the unit root test, while evidence of a cointegration relationship among the variables exists. The estimated PMG shows that in the long and short-run, agricultural TFP has significant positive and negative effects on economic growth, respectively, in the study. There is no effect of economic growth on agricultural TFP either in the long and short run. While the causality test shows that agricultural TFP Granger causes economic growth in the long and short run, we found no evidence that economic growth Granger causes agricultural TFP in the short run except in the long run. These findings show that greater attention to improving agricultural TFP would increase economic growth in the region. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth, Agricultural Productivity, Granger Causality, Panel data, Sub Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | O1 O13 Q11 Q18 |
| Date: | 2021–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110199&r= |
| By: | Alexandre Mergulhão; José Azevedo Pereira |
| Abstract: | There is a growing international concern about the slowdown in productivity growth, especially as labor productivity enhancements are important drivers of higher general-ised living standards.Using administrative data of firms in Portugal between 2010 and 2016, we analyse the relationships between productivity and wages. At odds with neoclassical theory of mar-ginal productivity of labor, we find that two thirds of firms insufficiently raised wages giv-en observed productivity growth. Employing unconditional quantile regressions, we in-vestigate some quantifiable determinants of the productivity-wage gap at different parts of the distributions. Most of the documented dynamics contributed not only to the diver-gence of productivity and wages but also to the decoupling of productivity and wage growth. We argue that labor market flexibilisation intensified segmentation, providing incentives for non standard contracts. Both dimensions, as well as higher board com-pensations, international trade and on-the-job training weakened the link between productivity and wages. |
| Keywords: | compensation, income distribution, Productivity, public policy, Quantile regressions, wage share |
| JEL: | C3 D2 D31 D33 J31 J38 |
| Date: | 2021–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaac:28-en&r= |
| By: | Mitra, Aruni |
| Abstract: | What explains the sudden vanishing of the procyclicality of productivity in the U.S. during the 1980s? Using cross-sectional evidence from states and industries, this paper argues that lower costs of hiring and firing workers due to rapid de-unionization can help explain the productivity puzzle. Lower cost of changing employment prompts firms to rely less on labour hoarding, thereby making productivity less procyclical. In a model with endogenous worker-effort and costly employment adjustment, allowing the hiring cost to decrease by the same amount as the decline in union density can match almost the entire drop in cyclical productivity correlations. |
| Keywords: | productivity, unions, hiring cost, factor utilization, DSGE |
| JEL: | E22 E23 E24 E32 J50 |
| Date: | 2021–10–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110102&r= |
| By: | Soojin Jo; Lilia Karnizova |
| Abstract: | CO2 emissions are commonly perceived to rise and fall with aggregate output. Yet many factors, including energy-efficiency improvements, emissions coefficient variations and shifts to cleaner energy, can break the positive emissions-output relationship. To evaluate the importance of such factors, we uncover shocks that by construction reduce emissions without lowering output. These novel shocks explain a substantial fraction of emissions fluctuations. After extensively examining their impacts on macroeconomic and environmental indicators, we interpret these shocks as changes in the energy efficiency of consumer products. Our results imply that models omitting energy efficiency likely overestimate the trade-off between environmental protection and economic performance. |
| Keywords: | Business fluctuations and cycles; Climate change; Econometric and statistical methods |
| JEL: | E32 Q43 Q55 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:21-47&r= |