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on Technology and Industrial Dynamics |
| By: | Martínez Ros, Ester; Kesidou, Effie; García-Quevedo, Jose |
| Abstract: | Building on insights from institutional theory, the resource-based view of the firm, and internationalisation, we seek to explain the variation in the adoption of organisational eco-innovations such as environmental management systems (EMS) across sectors in Spain in the period 2009&-2014. Previous studies on eco-innovation report that regulatory push/pull, technology-push, market-pull, and firm factors are drivers of this process. However, this literature pays relatively little attention to non-technological forms of eco-innovation, such as EMS. As a result, just how EMS adoption can be encouraged across sectors remains unclear in the innovation literature. Here, we seek to address this problem by combining data from the following sources: the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel, the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) survey, the Industry Survey, the Environmental Protection Survey, and the Air Emissions Account. The results of the econometric analysis of panel data reveal that, first, coercive institutional pressures are driving the adoption of EMS reflecting differences across sectors in energy and pollution intensity. Second, the adoption of ISO 9000 &- a highly institutionalised system of quality management &- increases the adoption of EMS in each industry because of complementarities between the two systems. Third, sectors with a high percentage of internationalised firms operate a higher number of EMS. |
| Keywords: | EMS; Panel data; Internationalisation; Institutional theory; Eco-innovation |
| JEL: | Q58 Q50 O30 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:idrepe:27380&r=tid |
| By: | Dauth, Wolfgang (University of Würzburg); Findeisen, Sebastian (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis); Suedekum, Jens (DICE Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf); Woessner, Nicole (DICE Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effect of industrial robots on employment, wages, and the composition of jobs in German labor markets between 1994 and 2014. We find that the adoption of industrial robots had no effect on total employment in local labor markets specializing in industries with high robot usage. Robot adoption led to job losses in manufacturing that were offset by gains in the business service sector. We analyze the impact on individual workers and find that robot adoption has not increased the risk of displacement for incumbent manufacturing workers. They stay with their original employer, and many workers adjust by switching occupations at their original workplace. The loss of manufacturing jobs is solely driven by fewer new jobs for young labor market entrants. Moreover, we find that, in regions with higher exposure to automation, labor productivity increases while the labor share in total income declines. |
| Keywords: | Automation; Labor market institutions; Inequality |
| JEL: | F16 J24 O33 R11 |
| Date: | 2018–08–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmoi:0013&r=tid |
| By: | Hockmann, Heinrich; Garzon Delvaux, Pedro Andres; Voigt, Peter; Ciaian, Pavel; Gomez y Paloma, Sergio |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of corporate research and development (R&D) on firm performance in the foodprocessing industry. We apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with two step bootstrapping using a corporate data for 307 food-processing firms from the EU, US, Canada and Japan for the period 1991–2009. The estimates suggest that R&D has a positive effect on the firms’ performance, with marginal gains decreasing in the R&D level as well as the performance differences are detected across regions and food sectors. R&D investments in food processing can deliver productivity gains, beyond the high-tech sectors generally favoured by innovation policy. |
| Keywords: | Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2017–08–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaae17:261274&r=tid |
| By: | Dario Diodato; Frank Neffke (Center for International Development at Harvard University); Neave O'Clery (Center for International Development at Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | The fact that firms benefit from close proximity to other firms with which they can exchange inputs, skilled labor or know-how helps explain why many industrial clusters are so successful. Studying the evolution of coagglomeration patterns, we show that which type of agglomeration benefits firms has drastically changed over the course of a century and differs markedly across industries. Whereas, at the beginning of the twentieth century, industries tended to colocate with their value chain partners, in more recent decades the importance of this channels has declined and colocation seems to be driven more by similarities industries' skill requirements. By calculating industry-specific Marshallian agglomeration forces, we are able to show that, nowadays, skill-sharing is the most salient motive in location choices of services, whereas value chain linkages still explain much of the colocation patterns in manufacturing. Moreover, the estimated degrees to which labor and input-output linkages are reflected in an industry's coagglomeration patterns help improve predictions of city-industry employment growth. |
| Keywords: | Coagglomeration, Marshallian externalities, labor pooling, value chains, manufacturing, services, regional diversification |
| JEL: | J24 O14 R11 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:89a&r=tid |
| By: | Toshihiro Okada (School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University) |
| Abstract: | Many developed economies experienced large and correlated fluctuations in the medium run during the postwar period. A good number of industrialized countries experienced high productivity growth during the 1960s and low growth between the early 1970s and the early 1980s. This paper develops a model of medium-run fluctuations incorporating research and development (R&D)-based endogenous growth and international R&D spillovers from a technologically leading country to a technologically lagging country. An important feature of the model is that a key role of the lagging country's R&D is innovation by leaning (IBL) from abroad. After calibration using U.S. and Japanese data, the model shows that changes in U.S.R&D expenditure alone can substantially explain Japan's medium-run fluctuations.The paper argues that the diffusion of U.S. innovations (generated by U.S. R&D) to Japan plays an important role in determining Japan's medium-run fluctuations |
| Keywords: | International R&D spillovers, technology diffusion, endogenous growth, medium-run fluctuations. |
| JEL: | E32 O19 O33 O41 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kgu:wpaper:183&r=tid |
| By: | Johannes Boehm; Ezra Oberfield |
| 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 appear to be more vertically integrated. To quantify the impact 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. |
| JEL: | E23 F12 O11 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24937&r=tid |
| By: | Iwasaki, Ichiro; Kočenda, Evžen |
| Abstract: | Using a dataset of 126,591 service firms in 17 European emerging economies, this paper aims to estimate firm survivability in the years 2007–2015 and examine its determinants. We found that 31.3%, or 39,557 firms, failed during the observation period. At the same time, however, the failure risk greatly differed among regions, perhaps due to the remarkable gap in the progress of economic and political reforms. Moreover, the results of survival analysis revealed that large shareholding, labor productivity, and firm age played strong roles in preventing business failure beyond differences in regions and sectors. |
| Keywords: | European emerging economies, Service industry, Survival analysis, Cox proportional hazards model |
| JEL: | D22 G01 G33 L89 P34 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2018-7&r=tid |
| By: | Emin Dinlersoz; Zoltan Wolf |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on the plant-level relationship between automation, labor and capital usage, and productivity. The evidence, based on the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey on Manufacturing Technology, indicates that more automated establishments have lower production labor share and higher capital share, and a smaller fraction of workers in production who receive higher wages. These establishments also have higher labor productivity and experience larger long-term labor share declines. The relationship between automation and relative factor usage is modelled using a CES production function with endogenous technology choice. This deviation from the standard Cobb-Douglas assumption is necessary if the within-industry differences in the capital-labor ratio are determined by relative input price differences. The CES-based total factor productivity estimates are signi cantly different from the ones derived under Cobb-Douglas production and positively related to automation. The results, taken together with earlier findings of the productivity literature, suggest that the adoption of automation may be one mechanism associated with the rise of superstar firms. |
| Keywords: | advanced manufacturing technology, automation, technology choice, total factor productivity, capital-labor substitution, labor share, CES production function, productivity estimation, robots |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:18-39&r=tid |