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on Efficiency and Productivity |
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Issue of 2021‒12‒06
nineteen papers chosen by |
| By: | Guvvala, Anupama; Falk, Thomas; Gregg, Daniel |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:314947&r= |
| By: | Ngango, Jules; Seungjee, Hong |
| Keywords: | Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Crop Production/Industries |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:314937&r= |
| By: | Zhou, Xiaoshi; Ma, Wanglin |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315143&r= |
| By: | Onoja, Anthony |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Crop Production/Industries |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315915&r= |
| By: | Adetoro, Adetoso A. |
| Keywords: | Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Productivity Analysis |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:314981&r= |
| By: | SJ, Balaji; Pal, Suresh |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315213&r= |
| By: | Kehinde, Ayodeji Damilola |
| Keywords: | Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315855&r= |
| By: | Araar, Abdelkrim |
| Keywords: | Farm Management, Productivity Analysis |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315902&r= |
| By: | Chiara Criscuolo; Peter Gal; Timo Leidecker; Giuseppe Nicoletti |
| Abstract: | Relying on linked employer-employee datasets from 10 countries, this paper documents that the skills and the diversity of the workforce and of managers – the human side of businesses – account on average for about one third of the labour productivity gap between firms at the productivity “frontier” (the top 10% within each detailed industry) and medium performers at the 40-60 percentile of the productivity distribution. The composition of skills, especially the share of high skills, varies the most along the productivity distribution, but low and medium skilled employees make up a substantial share of the workforce even at the frontier.High skills show positive but decreasing productivity returns. Moreover, the skill mix of top firms varies markedly across countries, pointing to the role of different strategies pursued by firms in different policy environments. We also find that managerial skills play a particularly important role, also through complementarities with worker skills. Gender and cultural diversity among managers – and to a lesser extent, among workers – is positively related to firm productivity as well. We discuss public policies that can facilitate the catch-up of firms below the frontier through skills and diversity. These cover a wide range of areas, exerting their influence through three main channels: the supply, upgrading and the matching across firms (the SUM) of skills and other human factors. |
| Keywords: | diversity, linked employer-employee data, managers, productivity, skills |
| JEL: | D24 J24 M14 |
| Date: | 2021–12–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaac:29-en&r= |
| By: | Eoin McLaughlin (University College Cork); Paul Sharp (University of Southern Denmark); Xanthi Tsoukli (University of Bamberg); Christian Vedel (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | The relative success of the Danish and failure of the Irish dairy industries before the First World War is often contrasted given their competition for the lucrative British butter market. The traditional narrative implicitly assumes that Ireland failed because it was unsuccessful at adopting the cooperative institution, and that Irish cooperatives were not as efficient as their Danish counterparts, despite having been explicitly modelled on them. This assumption is, however, untested at the ‘firm’ level. We seek to rectify this through the analysis of a large microlevel database of creameries in both countries over the period 1898-1903. Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), a standard methodology in modern productivity studies, we find no evidence for significant productivity differences on average, although there was a much larger variance in Ireland. This nuances the idea that the Irish were unable to cooperate successfully, although some creameries were certainly productivity laggards. |
| Keywords: | Dairying, Denmark, Ireland, microdata, productivity |
| JEL: | N13 N53 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0219&r= |
| By: | Johannes Boehm (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEP - LSE - Centre for Economic Performance - LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science); Ezra Oberfield (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organize production. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing plants, we show that production and sourcing decisions appear systematically distorted in states with weaker enforcement. Specifically, we document that in industries that tend to rely more heavily on relationship-specific intermediate inputs, plants in states with more-congested courts shift their expenditures away from intermediate inputs and have a greater vertical span of production. To quantify the effect of these distortions on aggregate productivity, we construct a model in which plants have several ways of producing, each with different bundles of inputs. Weak enforcement exacerbates a holdup problem that arises when using inputs that require customization, distorting both the intensive and extensive margins of input use. The equilibrium organization of production and the network structure of input-output linkages arise endogenously from the producers' simultaneous cost-minimization decisions. We identify the structural parameters that govern enforcement frictions from cross-state variation in the first moments of producers' cost shares. A set of counterfactuals show that enforcement frictions lower aggregate productivity to an extent that is relevant on the macro scale. |
| Keywords: | Production networks,Intermediate inputs,Misallocation,Productivity,Contract enforcement,Value chains |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03391855&r= |
| By: | Taylor, Matthew P.H.; Helfand, Steven M. |
| Keywords: | Marketing, Agribusiness |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315138&r= |
| By: | Eder, Andreas |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315100&r= |
| By: | Merfeld, Joshua |
| Keywords: | Production Economics, Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315914&r= |
| By: | Ho Fai Chan (Queensland University of Technology); Vincent Lariviére (University of Montreal); Naomi Moy (University of Bologna); Ali Sina Önder (University of Portsmouth); Donata Schilling (London School of Economics); Benno Torgler (Queensland University of Technology) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the role of complementarities in collaboration and academic productivity using a unique dataset on East German scientists’ publications in fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) after the German re-unification in 1990. We focus on East German scientists’ connections to their peers, their scientific productivity and impact as measured by the number of publications, citation accumulation, and the quality of journals where they publish. East German scientists show a significant convergence to their West German peers in all productivity accounts. We use the similarity of research portfolio to West German research in 1980s as identification and find that the effect of losing a collaborator on the productivity and collaborations of East German scientists differs with respect to their complementarities. Moreover, we find East Germans who collaborated with Soviet scientists on non-Western research fields during the 1980s are significantly more likely to re-wire their collaboration net- works towards Western Europe and the US in 1990s and 2000s. They are also more likely to switch their field of research and collaborate with West Germans who moved to an East German university or research institute after the re-unification. |
| Keywords: | Peer-Effects; Productivity; Institutions; Migration; East Germany |
| JEL: | J61 O33 |
| Date: | 2021–11–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pbs:ecofin:2021-09&r= |
| By: | Romensen, Gert-Jan; Soetevent, Adriaan R. |
| Abstract: | Can the design and intensity of performance feedback be used to improve worker productivity? We analyze two forms of feedback in a sample of 409 drivers at a large Dutch bus company: written peer-comparison reports and in-person coaching by high-achieving peers. We experimentally vary the nature and number of peer-comparison messages that drivers receive in their written feedback report. We exploit the quasi-experimental variation in the in-person coaching program implemented in parallel to the written feedback to analyze its effects. We find no effect of the announcement and introduction of the company's written feedback program on fuel efficiency. Including peer-comparison messages into these reports is generally ineffective in improving either fuel economy or outcomes pertaining to passenger comfort. In-person coaching however generates significant improvements on all dimensions for drivers in the bottom half of the performance distribution for about eight weeks. In-person coaching weakens the impact of written peer-comparison feedback but not vice versa. |
| Keywords: | labor productivity,feedback,peer comparisons,field experiment |
| JEL: | D23 J24 M53 Q55 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:246811&r= |
| By: | Marco A. Barrenechea-Mendez (Universidad Publica de Navarra); Sara Martinez-de-Morentin (Universidad Publica de Navarra) |
| Abstract: | Interconnected autonomous teams (IAT) reflect a human resources policy of organizing employees into a network of autonomous teams and allowing individuals to work on more than one of those teams. This paper studies how such a policy influences the productivity effects of profit sharing (PS). We first argue that the presence of IAT could mitigate the “free rider†problem in each team of the network. Next, using the European Working Conditions Survey, we document a positive relationship between employee productivity and the interaction between PS and IAT. We interpret this result as a confirmation that IAT might indeed alleviate the “free rider†problem associated with profit sharing schemes. |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nav:ecupna:2107&r= |
| By: | Adelekun, Christianah; Ayanwale, Adeolu |
| Keywords: | Crop Production/Industries |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315139&r= |
| By: | Lundborg, Petter (Lund University); James, Stefan (Uppsala University); Lagerqvist, Bo (Uppsala University); Vikström, Johan (IFAU) |
| Abstract: | Learning-by-doing is a fundamental concept in economics but a challenging one to document in high-skilled settings due to non-random assignment of workers to tasks and lacking performance measures. Our paper overcomes these challenges in the context of heart attack treatments in Sweden, where we exploit quasirandom assignment of physicians to patients. We document long learning curves, where physicians keep learning over the first 1000 treatments performed, affecting both proficiency and decision-making skills. These learning effects translate into effects on patient health, but only over the first 150 treatments performed, corresponding to one year of experience. Learning rates are higher for physicians who have worked with more experienced colleagues and who have gained more experience in treating complicated cases. Experienced physicians are more responsive to patient characteristics when deciding on treatments and experience from more recent heart attack treatments is more valuable than experience from more distant ones, suggesting that human capital depreciates. We also show that productivity growth keeps pace with wage growth over the first four years of the career but flattens out thereafter. Our results provide rare evidence on the existence of prolonged learning curves in high-skilled tasks and support the notion that learning-by-doing can be a powerful mechanism for productivity growth. |
| Keywords: | operation volume, learning-by-doing, survival, causal effect |
| JEL: | I11 I12 I18 L11 |
| Date: | 2021–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14744&r= |