measuring the spillovers from technical advance mainframe computers in financial services measuring the social gains from recent technological advances is difficult because there are no output indexes from some important adopters measurement methods that infer the willingness to pay of theadopting industries from the derived demand curve for a new technologyovercome this difficulty the derived demand for high speed computersfor use in banks finance and insurance is shown to imply a very largesocial gain to computerization that is not captured by computer manufacturers copyright 1986 by american economic association

multinationals productivity advantage scale or technology this study decomposes the productivity advantage of foreign multinationals into a technology and a scale effect and analyses the causal relationship between foreign ownership and these two components this is done by analyzing the effects of an acquisition of a domestic establishment by a foreign multinational using a combined propensity score matching and difference in differences estimation the main results show that any positive impact of acquisition is predominantly due to changes in technical efficiency and not in scale and that the preacquisition productivity of the target plays a role in mediating the rate of technology transfer from the multinational jel f23 l22

profit sharing and productivity some further evidence new estimates for west germany indicate overall productivity differentials of 20 30 percent in favor of firms practicing profit sharing these compare with estimates of 3 8 percent for comparable british firms reported in a recent issue like the u k results they reveal important interactions between profit sharing and other firm specific characteristics reinforcing the view that profit sharing be regarded as an integral element of overall organizational design but the fact that in germany profit sharing is apparently used in a different way than in the united kingdom by different kinds of firms suggests that there is no single uniquely appropriate context and role for profit sharing copyright 1990 by royal economic society

aggregate demand for electricity in south africa an analysis using the bounds testing approach to cointegration abstract electricity demand in south africa has grown at a very rapid rate over the past decade as part of reform initiatives to enhance long term sustainability of the country s electricity industry south africa s authorities have in recent years sought to develop an electricity pricing framework that is cost reflective and forms the cornerstone of demand management schemes meant to foster changes in consumption behaviour and enhance efficiency in resource use the effects of any pricing policy on aggregate electricity consumption will depend on a useful understanding of the factors that influence electricity demand and the magnitude to which electricity demand responds to changes in such factors in this context this paper applies the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed lag framework to examine the aggregate demand for electricity in south africa during the period 1960 2007 the results indicate that in the long run income is the main determinant of electricity demand with electricity prices having an insignificant effect on aggregate electricity demand future pricing policies will need to ensure that electricity prices are cost reflective and enhance efficiency of electricity supply and use

the lechatelier principle the lechatelier principle in the form introduced into economics by paul a samuelson asserts that at a point of long run equilibrium the derivative of long run compensated demand with respect to own price is larger in magnitude than the derivative of short run compensated demand the authors introduce an extended lechatelier principle that applies also to large price changes and to uncompensated demand as well as to a wide range of concave and nonconcave maximization problems outside the scope of demand theory this extension also clarifies the intuitive basis of the principle copyright 1996 by american economic association

performance related pay and firm productivity evidence from a reform in the structure of collective bargaining the authors investigate the causal effect on firm productivity of a switch from fixed wages to collective performance related pay exploiting a reform in the structure of collective bargaining triggered by a social pact they find that an increase in the adoption of collective performance related pay leads to a 3 to 5 productivity gain but that such effect declines over time they show that the effect on productivity varies substantially by firm size industry affiliation and union density both the size of the bonus and the design of the scheme in terms of number and types of parameters used are also important features for a firm s productivity

reap what you sow agricultural technology urbanization and structural change abstract this paper studies how productivity enhancing agricultural technology affects urbanization by provoking structural change we investigate these issues using a natural experiment in the united states the results show that technologies which improve crop productivity lead to a less urbanized economy as economic activity relocates from manufacturing and services towards agriculture the effects are highly persistent and are driven by the technology increasing agricultural labor demand our findings highlight the potentially unintended disruptive force of innovative technologies

industrial electricity consumption in the uk past determinants and future prospects the determinants of industrial electricity demand are examined and it is found that more than 40 of demand growth in the period 1959 1980 was caused by factors either unrelated or only indirectly related to growth in industrial output factors such as adjustments in industrial structure technical change and the decline in self generation of electricity were all important contributors to demand growth together with the methodological problems of using price as an explanatory variable this suggests that those econometric approaches to demand forecasting for industrial electricity which rely solely on projections of industrial output and price are seriously defective output level and price are important in future demand but current methods are not appropriate to capture their effect and more detailed sectoral work is required which should take into account structural and technical change and developments in self generation

profitability and profit sharing claims that profit sharing is a purely distributive wealth confiscation scheme without incentive effects due to free rider problems are based on neglect of cooperation and interaction in the workforce when these activities are difficult to monitor directly group incentives such as profit sharing can increase efficiency and maintain a superior nashequilibrium with strictly individual optimization with simultaneous wls tobit estimates we find here strong effects of profit sharing and worker ownership shares on residual owners return on capital in medium sized metal working firms in west germany complementing earlier results on productivity

profit sharing and productivity an analysis of uk engineering firms this paper reports productivity differentials of 3 8 percent in favor of profit sharing firms in the u k engineering industry the estimates come from equations in which profit sharing interacts with factor input levels and the firms technological organizational and labor force characteristics and imply more than a simple incentive effect on work effort or more cooperative behavior in given circumstances a technological labor relations interpretation of the origin of the gains is suggested which are found to be asymmetrically distributed the results question policy measures to encourage profit sharing that do not take account of its significance in the process of organizational design copyright 1989 by royal economic society

a retrospective look at the u s productivity growth resurgence it is widely recognized that information technology was critical to the dramatic acceleration of u s labor productivity growth in the mid 1990s this paper traces the evolution of productivity estimates to document how and when this perception emerged early studies concluded that information technology was relatively unimportant only after the massive information technology investment boom of the late 1990s did this investment and underlying productivity increases in the information technology producing sectors come to be identified as important sources of growth although information technology has diminished in significance since the dot com crash of 2000 and observed growth rates have slowed recently we project that private sector productivity growth will average around 2 4 percent per year for the next decade only moderately below the average of the post 1995 period

the impact of high tech capital on productivity evidence from australia i introduction the bulk of the empirical research on the relationship between high tech capital investment and productivity has been based on data for the united states given the relatively large size of the high tech capital sector in the u s economy it is likely that the united states is a special case most economies resemble australia s in being net importers of high tech capital not producing high tech capital was often cited as a weakness in these economies relative to the united states however since the end of the late 1990s tech boom there has been a reappraisal of whether the production or the use of high tech capital is most beneficial hence to shed light on this debate the main purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between high tech capital use and the multifactor productivity mfp of 10 industries in the australian market sector using annual data for 1966 2002 alternative specifications of production functions are considered and estimated alternative measures of high tech capital are included with combinations of computers software and electronics capital in the first production function high tech capital is allowed to be more or less productive than other capital to determine whether there is a relationship between high tech capital and mfp it is also possible to test whether there are excess returns to high tech capital for robustness testing purposes a second production function is specified with high tech capital as a separate input into production other potential sources of mfp growth such as public capital research and development stocks and microeconomic reform are also included in the production functions we find evidence of a positive relationship between high tech capital and mfp in the market sector there is less evidence however of excess returns to high tech capital which suggests that current investment levels are not inadequate the results by industry suggest that the benefits of investing in high tech capital are not distributed evenly across the economy with only some industries experiencing a positive relationship between high tech capital and mfp the structure of this article is as follows in section ii the theoretical contribution of high tech capital to mfp and the evidence to date is reviewed in section iii the methodology is outlined in section iv data sources and trends are described in section v the results are presented and interpreted and section vi concludes ii the impact of high tech capital on output and productivity the theory and evidence the impact of investment in high tech capital has been the subject of debate between new economy sceptics and optimists for several years it is widely accepted that mfp has increased substantially in u s high tech producing industries in which the rate of technological change has been phenomenal over the past 40 years several publications have found a quantifiable contribution by computer producing industries to u s output growth 1 however australia is not generally regarded as a producer of computers data from the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd 1998 indicate that the high tech share of australian manufacturing value added was 4 5 in 1995 compared to 15 8 in the united states therefore the substantial u s economy wide mfp improvements specifically associated with its computer producing industry are unlikely to be replicated in the australian economy over the past 30 years there has been rapid accumulation of high tech capital in many countries australia was the third most intensive user of high tech capital in the oecd in 1995 behind the united states and new zealand simon and wardrop 2002 find that this rapid accumulation of high tech capital may have substantially contributed to australia s economic growth during the 1990s this accumulation has been driven by technological change in high tech producing industries lowering the price of high tech capital

towards a knowledge based theory of the geographical cluster co located firms within related industries enhance the ability to create knowledge by variation and a deepened division of labour the interdependent development between economic activities and local institutions make the cluster attractive to some industries and hostile to others the very reasons why cognitive distance might be small within the cluster tend to make cognitive distance great between clusters and make interfirm co operation across bodies of knowledge more costly the additional value created when clustering may justify the additional cost copyright 2001 by oxford university press

instability of electricity demand functions in the post oil embargo period abstract the temporal stability of electricity demand functions with distributed lags is examined over the 1961 1980 period the distributed lag models considered include the partial adjustment model the unconstrained lag model and the almon polynomial lag procedure demand functions are estimated for the residential commercial and industrial sectors and tested for stability in the pre and post oil embargo period most of the demand functions estimated are statistically unstable over these periods although a partial adjustment specification of the industrial demand equation appears to be stable the income price and cross elasticities are significantly different over the subperiods for the residential and commercial demand equations

cooperation productivity and profit sharing firm specific assets generate an ex post bargaining problem over surplus division and rational workers may collude to obtain a surplus share in nonpecuniary form through restriction of effort conversely profit sharing should motivate cooperation to increase productivity when work organization facilitates interaction and horizontal monitoring since productive effort yields positive externalities to workers under contractual surplus sharing in simultaneous tobit estimates we find a strong influence of profit sharing on factor productivity in a sample of medium sized metalworking capitalist firms in west germany proxies for human capital and organizational factors were included

on investment and exchange rate movements we investigate the ways in which permanent exchange rate changes may affect investment by influencing domestic and foreign revenue the cost of imported variable inputs and the investment price of imported capital goods we find that the revenue and investment price channels have a quantitatively greater effect on investment than the cost channel the negative effect of the revenue channel which affects the marginal profitability of capital outweighs the positive effect of the investment price channel which affects the marginal cost of capital implying that exchange rate appreciation has a net negative influence on investment the estimation results are robust to different approaches to extracting the permanent components of exchange rates

the ecology of organizational mortality american labor unions 1836 1985 this research analyzes the disbanding rates of the full population of american national labor unions for the period 1836 1985 it tests the hypothesis drawn from population ecology theory that di

growth accounting when technical change is embodied in capital this paper revisits the hypothesis that technical change is embodied in capital it extends old results to make them more relevant to the contemporary debates about the adjustment of investment goods for quality change and about the role of embodied technical change as a source of economic growth it is shown that the failure to adjust capital for quality change has the effect of suppressing the quality effects into the conventional total factor productivity residual and it is found that approximately 20 percent of the residual growth of quality adjusted output could be attributed to embodied technical change copyright 1992 by american economic association

the evolution of price elasticity of electricity demand in south africa a kalman filter application abstract in south africa the electricity mismatch of supply and demand has been of major concern additional to past problems the 2008 electricity crisis made the solution crucial after its damaging consequences to the economy the disagreement on the need and consequences of the continuous electricity price hikes worsens the situation to contribute to the recent electricity debate this paper proposes a time varying price elasticity of demand for electricity the sensitivity of electricity consumption to price fluctuations changes throughout the years the main purpose of this study is the estimation of the price elasticity of electricity in south africa during the period 1980 2005 by employing an advanced econometric technique the kalman filter apart from the decreasing effect of electricity prices to consumption 71 8 in the 1990s and 94 5 in the 2000s in average our results conclude to an important finding the higher the prices for example in the 1980s the higher the sensitivity of consumers to price fluctuations thus further increases of the electricity prices may lead to changes in the behaviour of electricity consumers focusing their efforts on improving their efficiency levels by introducing demand side management techniques or even turning to other sources of cheaper energy

effects of ancestral populations on entrepreneurial founding and failure private liquor stores in alberta 1994 2003 until 1993 all liquor stores in the canadian province of alberta were government owned and run in the fall of 1993 the provincial government exited liquor retailing all government stores were shut down and entrepreneurs were allowed to open private liquor stores in this article we take advantage of this abrupt regulatory change in the alberta liquor retailing industry to address two related issues that have received little empirical attention first we investigate how an ancestral population affects processes of legitimation and competition while density dependence theory predicts that legitimation effects outweigh competitive effects at low levels of density will this be the case when a new population replaces a similar ancestral one second beyond density dependence we investigate how ancestral populations affect the locations of new entrepreneurial ventures will entrepreneurs follow ancestral location patterns and will these ancestral locations confer survival advantages to answer these questions we map all private liquor stores on the street map of calgary alberta s largest city from 1994 to 2003 and analyze store founding and failure we use our results to draw implications for theories of density dependence entrepreneurial behavior and industry spatial structure copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the value of control in emerging markets when a developed country multinational firm acquires majority control of a firm in an emerging market there is an economically large and statistically significant increase in the acquiring firm s stock price in 1986 2006 developed market acquirers experienced positive and significant abnormal returns of 1 16 on average over a three day event window positive acquirer returns and dollar value gains appear unique to emerging market mergers and acquisitions and are not replicated when the same developed market acquirers take over firms in developed markets the size of the stock price increase is more pronounced a the weaker the contracting environment in the emerging market and b for industries with high asset intangibility the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

what you want depends on what you know firm preferences in an information age information has become a core input for many companies this article examines how this affects firm policy preferences in contrast to national typologies of capitalism or microeconomic expectation

long and short term efficiency in an automobile factory an econometric case study abstract this paper models the production technology of an automobile assembly plant as an integrated long and short term relationship between inputs labor and capital and output number of monthly assembled units the parameters of the production function elasticity of output to labor and capital and the growth rate in total factor productivity tfp are estimated using the error correction mechanism ecr the paper compares the tfp and the inverse of the hours per vehicle hpv the standard measure of productivity used in the industry as indicators of operating efficiency of a production unit the empirical application also highlights the potentialities of the ecm in insider and case study econometrics research especially when the observed output and inputs of a production process deviate from the production technological frontier due to anticipated and unanticipated perturbations in the operations

ict and transport infrastructure development an empirical analysis of complementarity abstractthis paper provides an empirical framework to assess the nonlinear complementary linkage effects that arise from the interaction between motorway capital and information and communications

ict capital and services complementarities the italian evidence this article investigates whether information and communication technologies icts hardware and services play a complementary role in boosting economic growth the main argument is that investments in ict fixed capital are a necessary but not sufficient condition leading to productivity gains above all in late adopter countries their effective implementation indeed requires on the one hand a changing economic structure characterized by a growing weight of service sectors and on the other hand complementary investments in ict services directed to ease the integration of the new technologies within firms boundaries the analysis is conducted on a late industrialized country like italy and shows that in lagging countries the weak impact of ict adoption is the result of three converging forces relatively high share of manufacturing sectors low adoption levels of icts in traditional manufacturing sectors inadequate investments in ict services

initial advantage the origins of the geographic concentration of the pharmaceutical industry in the mid atlantic region in this paper we offer an interpretation of the social and institutional context that promoted the development and evolution of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry our interest is in defining the historical circumstances that led to the geographic concentration of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the mid atlantic region our focus is both geographic and institutional as we seek to understand the forces behind geographic localization and the ways in which geographic localization may contribute to the advancement of science and to the evolution of industries in this paper we describe the general development of the industry in the mid atlantic region of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries copyright 1996 by oxford university press

information technology and the changing workplace in canada firm level evidence recent advances in information and communication technology ict have had dramatic effects on both individual and workplace performance use of computers and the internet as general purpose technologies has spread rapidly across all sectors of the economy transforming business organization increasing competition and fostering innovation understanding the influence of ict on the dynamics of the workplace requires information on both demand and supply sides of the labor market but it is only recently that the study of both sides of the market has become feasible using linked employer employee data in this article we investigate the effects of new technology on firm productivity using the rich canadian workplace and employee survey for the period 1999 2003 we apply a mixed regression model which includes both firm and employee characteristics as well as their interactions with computer use our model allows us to control for unobserved heterogeneity at higher levels along many dimensions our findings indicate that computer use by employees has a positive and significant effect on the productivity of firms that the effect has not lost its momentum and that spillover effects are not significant moreover human capital enhances the effect of computer use on productivity but organizational changes do not interact with computer use in our sample period copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

estimation of elasticities for domestic energy demand in mozambique abstract in mozambique households consume a mix of energy sources to satisfy their needs for lighting and cooking and for wealthier households other domestic necessities such as refrigeration the domestic energy mix depends on the prices of the sources and on the capability of the household to invest in the energy consuming appliances required to satisfy those needs based on data from a household survey carried out in mozambique during 2002 3 iaf this paper calculates the price and the income elasticities of demand for domestic energy using an econometric method developed by deaton the calculations are made for all households at the national level differentiating for urban and rural households and for the northern households of mozambique in the econometric formulation proxies for the ownership of energy appliances per household are used allowing a simple evaluation of the effects of asset ownership on the demand for energy own and cross price elasticities for five individual domestic sources are obtained low grade sources such as firewood and charcoal are less elastic elasticities of 0 41 and 0 28 respectively than candles kerosene and electricity respectively 0 88 0 79 and 0 60 income elasticities are respectively 0 45 0 32 0 93 0 84 and 0 69 placing firewood and charcoal as the less responsive to income variations and candles and kerosene as the most responsive we also comment on the factors influencing domestic energy transition

the relationship between energy and gnp further results this paper reexamines the casuality between gnp and energy consumption by using updated us data for the period 1947 1979 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and employment applying sims technique we find no causal relationship between gnp and energy consumption we find further that there is a slight unidirectional flow running from employment to energy consumption economic interpretations of the empirical results are also presented

paradox lost firm level evidence on the returns to information systems spending the productivity paradox of information systems is is that despite enormous improvements in the underlying technology the benefits of is spending have not been found in aggregate output statistics one explanation is that is spending may lead to increases in product quality or variety which tend to be overlooked in the aggregate statistics even if they increase output at the firm level furthermore the restructuring and cost cutting that are often necessary to realize the potential benefits of is have only recently been undertaken in many firms our study uses new firm level data on several components of is spending for 1987 1991 the dataset includes 367 large firms which generated approximately 1 8 trillion dollars in output in 1991 we supplemented the is data with data on other inputs output and price deflators from other sources as a result we could assess several econometric models of the contribution of is to firm level productivity our results indicate that is spending has made a substantial and statistically significant contribution to firm output we find that the gross marginal product mp for computer capital averaged 81 for the firms in our sample we find that the mp for computer capital is at least as large as the marginal product of other types of capital investment and that dollar for dollar is labor spending generates at least as much output as spending on non is labor and expenses because the models we applied were similar to those that have been previously used to assess the contribution of is and other factors of production we attribute the different results to the fact that our data set is more current and larger than others explored we conclude that the productivity paradox disappeared by 1991 at least in our sample of firms

e commerce trends and impacts across europe abstract this study investigates patterns in electronic commerce e commerce activities and their impact on labour productivity growth for a group of 14 european countries at hand for the exercise is a unique panel of micro aggregated firm level data spanning the years 2002 2010 the empirical approach involves two main elements a static specification and a dynamic panel data model the former is a difference specification estimated by ols and the latter model uses the system gmm estimator to account for endogeneity of e commerce activities for the impact analysis e commerce is defined specifically as e sales that is orders firms receive electronically through edi or websites descriptive statistics reveal that the proportion of firms engaging in e sales activities after starting from a low level is slowly growing over time the ols estimates which control for industry time and country effects show that the changes in e sales activities and labour productivity growth are significantly positively related specifically an increase in e sales by one percentage point raises labour productivity growth by 0 3 percentage points over a two year period service industries experience a larger impact than does manufacturing similar results are produced by the dynamic panel data estimations which show that the increase in e sales activities during the period studied accounts for 18 per cent of the total growth in labour productivity in addition the results demonstrate that smaller firms gain the most from increases in e sales overall the magnitude of the estimates differs less across methods than it does between industries or over time

the price elasticity of electricity demand in south africa this paper examines the effects of price on the demand for electricity in south africa over the period 1950 83 emphasis is placed on the estimation of the long run own price elasticity of electricity demand an unconstrained distributed lag model is used and the 12 years elasticity is estimated to be 0 90 the policy implications of this finding are discussed

the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox author s paul a david source the american economic review vol 80 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundred and second annual meeting of the american economic association may 1990 pp 355 361 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2006600 accessed 08 12 2010 01 40

long term evolutionary change in organizational populations theory models and empirical findings in industrial demography organizational ecology is a theoretical perspective on organizations that attempts to explain long term social evolution especially the rise and fall of organizational populations this artist review the most sustained demographic research program of the perspective one based on the density dependent model of legitimation and competition it discusses the theoretical model and evidence from industrial demography that has been offered in its support as well as criticisms that have been registered unresolved research problems of the program are identified and three major models in progress attempting to address these open questions are discussed and compared copyright 1997 by oxford university press

recent instability of the demand for money an international perspective aggregate money demand functions once an apparent bulwark for macroeconomic research have had to be re examined in the light of the events and discoveries of the 1970s following goldfeld s extensive analysis it now is widely recognized that the demand for mi balances in the united states cannot be explained satisfactorily by standard functions apparently because of shifts occurring in the early 1970s similar reservations see below have been expressed with respect to m3 balances in the united kingdom where the demand relationships appear to have been upset by the introduction of regulatory reforms in 1971 in both cases part of the problem can be traced to specific events but the possibility remains that a more general instability may be present the rapid inflation experienced by all major industrial countries after 1973 the concurrent collapse of the bretton woods system of fixed exchange rates and the attempts by most major central banks to control growth in domestic money stocks may all have altered the responses of the demand for money to the standard functional arguments this paper presents a range of stability tests for a set of demand functions estimated for two monetary aggregates in each of six countries in order to determine whether money demand functions more generally have been stable over the recent period and to attempt to identify the nature and causes of any observed instabilities the major conclusions are that none of the other functions examined displays instabilities as severe as those of the mi function for the united states and that the latter may be unstable in a more persistent and fundamental way than has heretofore been recognized the equations estimated for this study are based on a variant of goldfeld s log linear real balances function the deflated value of money balances is related to real income interest rates and inflation with lagged adjustments introduced via a simple koyck transformation this function obviously is in a simplified form especially with respect to the lag struc

customer and supplier driven externalities the purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence helpful for distinguishing different types of externalities we pursue this by extending the productionfunction framework of robert e hall 1990 and caballero and lyons 1990 1992 to exploit two key dimensions of the data disaggregate input output relationships and differences between estimates emphasizing time series versus cross sectional aspects of the data we obtain three main results first from the within estimates using annual data which emphasize the time series properties common across sectors we find a strong reduced form relationship between industry productivity and the activity level input growth of customers in sharp contrast supplier activity levels are insignificant the second result derives from between estimates which emphasize the cross sectional dimension of the data here we find the opposite is true there is a strong reduced form relationship between industry productivity and the activity level of suppliers but no relationship with customer activity levels we interpret the first two results as suggesting that over shorter horizons the linkage between an industry and its customers is pivotal in the transmission of external effects while in the long run external effects are mostly related to intermediate goods linkages the third result concerns the transition from short to long run we find that as the number of periods over which the variables are averaged is incrementally increased from one year toward the full sample period 27 years the significance of customers versus suppliers smoothly reverses itself the remainder of the paper is organized in four sections section i presents the core model and the econometric methods for disentangling the external effects section ii describes the data and estimation section iii presents the main results and our conclusions are presented in section iv

verifying the relation between labor productivity and productive efficiency by means of the properties of the input output matrices the european case abstract this article discusses the relationship between labor productivity and the degree of production efficiency for 24 countries inside the european union eu over a period of 17 years a panel data econometric model is used to estimate it to this end an indicator of productive efficiency has been applied it is based on the dominant eigenvalue of the matrix of technical coefficients of the input output model this indicator allows the relationship between the economic sectors of each country and its productive technologies to be taken into account the results reveal a significant relationship between the proposed productive efficiency indicator and labor productivity finally several implications from a policy perspective are suggested as concluding remarks

labour productivity change drivers business impact and macroeconomic moderators abstract this paper focuses on the operational drivers of labour productivity changes we consider two sets of drivers a current working practices and b changes in working practices through management programs the relationship between these two sets of drivers and productivity changes are analysed we also investigate the importance of productivity growth by looking at the impact of labour productivity changes on business performance changes finally the moderating effects of industry and country on the use of drivers of productivity changes are examined data from an international survey imss iv are used for the analysis

the spatial evolution of the british automobile industry does location matter this article aims to describe and explain the spatial evolution of the automobile sector in great britain from an evolutionary perspective this analysis is based on a unique database of all entries and exits in this sector during the period 1895 1968 collected by the authors cox regressions show that spinoff dynamics agglomeration economies and time of entry have had a significant effect on the survival rate of automobile firms during the period 1895 1968

the effects of double counting and expensing on the measured returns to r d this article focuses on the effects of double counting and expensing on the measured returns to r d the contribution of research and development r d to economic growth has been measured in two general ways the first is to compute total factor productivity in a growth accounting framework and to attribute this residual growth to r d the prevailing view is that in the presence of double counting the measured contribution of r d represents the return above and beyond the normal remuneration to traditional capital author demonstrate that this excess returns interpretation eri is essentially correct in the growth accounting framework and that the resulting bias in the measured contribution of r d to growth is large in postwar u s manufacturing the measured residual is biased downward by as much as 30 the expensing bias is downward and reinforces the excess returns bias in this case and the total bias is large in both the growth accounting and econometric contexts the magnitude of the biases may vary across samples and over time there is simply no substitute for properly measured variables

exports growth and causality in developing countries abstract previous empirical studies have interpreted results in regressions of output variables on export variables as providing support for an export promotion development strategy such an interpretation is questionable since these regressions provide no means of determining the direction of causality this paper performs causality tests between exports and growth for 37 developing countries the results cast considerable doubt on the validity of the export promotion hypothesis

capital labor and the firm a study of german codetermination under the german corporate governance system of codetermination employees are legally allocated control rights over corporate assets through seats on the supervisory board that is the board of nonexecutive directors the supervisory board oversees the management board the board of executive directors approves or rejects its decisions and appoints its members and sets their salaries we empirically investigate the implications of this sort of labor participation in corporate decision making we find that companies with equal representation of employees and shareholders on the supervisory board trade at a 31 stock market discount as compared with companies where employee representatives fill only one third of the supervisory board seats we show that under equal representation management board compensation provides incentives that are not conducive to furthering shareholders interests possibly because labor maximizes a different objective function than shareholders we document that under equal representation companies have longer payrolls than their one third representation peers have finally we provide evidence that shareholders respond to the allocation of control rights to labor by linking supervisory board compensation to firm performance and by leveraging up the firm jel g32 g34

interpreting the wage gap estimate from selectivity correction techniques using micro data abstract the selectivity correction techniques lead to two conceptually different wage gap estimates including the selectivity correction factors in the computation of the wage gap leads to a conditional estimate whereas excluding them leads to a potential estimate

efficiency and internal organization works councils in west german firms efficiency voice theory has not explained why highly competent managers cannot maintain effective communication without formal or mandatory institutions of l abor s voice powerful west german works councils are negatively rela ted to productivity in the sample suggesting that the best managers can do better without councils however excessive pressure on worker s should encourage both unionization and councils to gain compensatin g differentials and the simultaneous wls tobit estimates also suppor t this effect general productivity benefits from formal voice organi zation are strongly rejected but evaluating welfare efficiency and causality directly requires data on job satisfaction and managerial ability copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

what determines productivity performance of telecommunications services industry a cross country analysis this article investigates the key factors that determine the productivity performance of telecommunications services industry a simple theoretical model is used to illustrate that the total factor productivity tfp growth is attributable to the effects of scale economies market competition and technical change we then examine empirically the effect of various factors on the tfp growth in the industry using panel data in 12 organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries for the period 1983 through 2003 the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical prediction a new finding in this article is that higher machinery and equipment m e capital intensity and human capital contribute to higher tfp growth in the telecommunications services industry the decomposition analysis also suggests that technical change induced by changes in m e capital intensity and human capital are important sources of productivity performance in the industry across the oecd countries contrib

does the new economy measure up to the great inventions of the past abstract during the four years 1995 99 u s productivity growth experienced a strong revival and achieved growth rates exceeding that of the golden age of 1913 72 accordingly many observers have declared the new economy to be an industrial revolution even more important than the second industrial revolution of 1860 1900 which made the golden age of productivity growth possible this paper dissects the recent productivity revival subtracts out a cyclical component and concludes that there is no revival of the productivity growth trend in the 88 percent of the private economy lying outside of the durables manufacturing sector the paper explains this surprising finding by pointing to limitations in computers and the internet in comparison with the great inventions of the past

on the choice of incentives in firms abstract simple models of individual and group incentives under uncertainty are compared and comparative performance is shown to depend upon various exogenous parameters the incentive effects of profit sharing will thus vary with organizational and other characteristics that may be difficult to observe and attempts to quantify productivity effects that neglect selection bias are likely to be misspecified significant selection effects are found in previously used firm level data and productivity effects of existing profit sharing are found to be much larger than potential effects in firms without sharing arrangements this throws doubt on policies to encourage sharing in isolation

profit sharing and the financial performance of companies evidence from u k panel data this paper examines the dynamic relationship between profit sharing and profitability in a sample of u k firms during the 1980s the estimates indicate a positive short run effect of the introduction of profit sharing schemes on the financial performance of companies this relationship is evident even if unobserved firm specific fixed effects and potential endogeneity of profit sharing are controlled for quite apart from its widely recognized influence on productivity and industrial relations profit sharing is arguably a financially attractive option for firms there is also evidence of the persistence of profitability in u k profit sharing firms copyright 1994 by royal economic society

location patterns of us industrial research mimetic isomorphism and the emergence of geographic charisma appold s j 2005 locational patterns of us industrial research mimetic isomorphism and the emergence of geographic charisma regional studies39 17 39 the emergence of new industrial spaces over the past several decades that have radically altered the economic geography of the usa raises questions about the mechanisms responsible for their formation existing theories predict either continued concentration or spatial dispersion none predicts the rise of new geographic agglomerations of establishments a behavioural theory of agglomeration formation explains the emergence of regionally dispersed local agglomerations by means of mimetic behaviour a method for detecting social influence in cross sectional data is applied to data on the 1985 locations by county of over 10 000 privately owned research laboratories to show that the theoretical model accurately reproduces a key aspect of the existing spatial pattern the results suggest that laboratories are to a significant extent reacting to each o

new technologies and the labor market abstract using newspaper job ad text from 1960 to 2000 we measure job tasks and the adoption of individual information and communication technologies icts most new technologies are associated with an increase in nonroutine analytic tasks and a decrease in nonroutine interactive routine cognitive and routine manual tasks we embed these interactions in a quantitative model of worker sorting across occupations and technology adoption through the lens of the model the arrival of icts broadly shifts workers away from routine tasks which increases the college premium a notable exception is the microsoft office suite which has the opposite set of effects

the internet and local wages a puzzle how did the diffusion of the internet affect regional wage inequality we examine the relationship between business investment in advanced internet technology and local variation in us wage growth between 1995 and 2000 we identify a puzzle the internet is widespread but the economic payoffs are not advanced internet technology is only associated with substantial wage growth in the 6 percent of counties that were already highly wealthy educated and populated and had it intensive industry advanced internet and wage growth appear unrelated elsewhere overall advanced internet explains over half the difference in wage growth between already well off counties and all others jel j31 l86 o33 r11 r23

computing productivity firm level evidence we explore the effect of computerization on productivity and output growth using data from 527 large us firms over 1987 1994 we find that computerization makes a contribution to measured productivity and output growth in the short term using one year differences that is consistent with normal returns to computer investments however the productivity and output contributions associated with computerization are up to five times greater over long periods using five to seven year differences the results suggest that the observed contribution of computerization is accompanied by relatively large and time consuming investments in complementary inputs such as organizational capital that may be omitted in conventional calculations of productivity the large long run contribution of computers and their associated complements that we uncover may partially explain the subsequent investment surge in computers in the late 1990s

testing the effect of investments in it and r d on labour productivity new method and evidence for indian firms abstract utilizing a micro level dataset of 900 firms for the period 2000 2016 from indian manufacturing this paper explores the effects of technological investments on labour productivity performance of firms by looking at investments in information technology it and research development r d the present study is the first to assess the role of it and r d jointly for indian manufacturing to control for transmission bias in production function estimation a gmm based one step control function estimator is applied we find large effects of both it and r d across various sub samples further our results imply that there is a complementarity between it and r d in generating labour productivity growth