Query: workforce productivity analysis in retail sector

Candidate papers:

abstract: This Economic Letter focuses on productivity growth in one area of the economy: the retail trade industry. Although strong productivity growth is often associated with high tech industries (such as semiconductor manufacturing) the retail sector has enjoyed above average productivity growth and contributed significantly to the acceleration in productivity at the national level. In addition, the retail trade industry highlights the diverse forces involved in the evolution of productivity growth.
author_names: Mark Doms
title: Productivity growth and the retail sector
year: 2004

abstract: The U.S. retail trade sector underwent a massive restructuring and reallocation of activity in the 1990s with accompanying technological advances. Using a data set of establishments in that sector, we quantify and explore the relationship between this restructuring and reallocation and labor productivity dynamics. We find that virtually all of the labor productivity growth in the retail trade sector is accounted for by more productive entering establishments displacing much less productive exiting establishments. The productivity gap between low productivity exiting single unit establishments and entering high productivity establishments from large, national chains plays a disproportionate role in these dynamics.
author_names: Lucia S Foster

John C Haltiwanger

C J Krizan
title: Market Selection, Reallocation, and Restructuring in the U.S. Retail Trade Sector in the 1990s
venue: The Review of Economics and Statistics
year: 2006

abstract: We develop a monopolistically competitive model of trade with firm heterogeneity in terms of productivity differences and endogenous differences in the "toughness" of competition across markets in terms of the number and average productivity of competing firms. We analyse how these features vary across markets of different size that are not perfectly integrated through trade; we then study the effects of different trade liberalization policies. In our model, market size and trade affect the toughness of competition, which then feeds back into the selection of heterogeneous producers and exporters in that market. Aggregate productivity and average mark ups thus respond to both the size of a market and the extent of its integration through trade (larger, more integrated markets exhibit higher productivity and lower mark ups) Our model remains highly tractable, even when extended to a general framework with multiple asymmetric countries integrated to different extents through asymmetric trade costs. We believe this provides a useful modelling framework that is particularly well suited to the analysis of trade and regional integration policy scenarios in an environment with heterogeneous firms and endogenous mark ups.
author_names: Gianmarco Ireo Paolo Ottaviano

Marc J Melitz
title: Market Size, Trade, and Productivity
year: 2005

abstract: Several recent comparative studies have shown a labour productivity gap in respect of UK retailing when compared with other countries, notably France and the USA. This article seeks to identify, through an overview of existing data and related research, the extent to which retail productivity in the UK compares to global competitors and attempts to reach a consensus on the factors that determine retail productivity, while highlighting common performance measures for retailers and Government to use in measuring future productivity trends. Methods employed include a review of published studies; interviews with industry participants in the UK and a small number of leading retailers in the USA; and an analysis of a specially created database of the performance of over 200 US, UK and French retail companies. The authors find that it is unwise to draw definitive conclusions from aggregate international economic analyses of the sector; that a wide variety of efficiency indicators are employed by the sector in practice; and that there are significant differences in the structure, operating and regulatory environment for retailing in the UK which impose costs on retailers that are not necessarily incurred in other countries.
author_names: Jonathan Reynolds

Elizabeth B Howard

Dimitry Dragun

Bridget Rosewell

Paul Ormerod
title: Assessing the Productivity of the UK Retail Sector
year: 2005

abstract: Economists have shown that large and persistent differences in productivity levels across businesses are ubiquitous. This finding has shaped research agendas in a number of fields, including (but not limited to) macroeconomics, industrial organization, labor, and trade. This paper surveys and evaluates recent empirical work addressing the question of why businesses differ in their measured productivity levels. The causes are manifold, and differ depending on the particular setting. They include elements sourced in production practices and therefore over which producers have some direct control, at least in theory as well as from producers' external operating environments. After evaluating the current state of knowledge, I lay out what I see are the major questions that research in the area should address going forward.
author_names: Chad Syverson
title: What Determines Productivity?
year: 2010

abstract: We explore the effect of computerization on productivity and output growth using data from 527 large U.S. firms over 19871994. We find that computerization makes a contribution to measured productivity and output growth in the short term (using 1 year differences) that is consistent with normal returns to computer investments. However, the productivity and output contributions associated with computerization are up to 5 times greater over long periods (using 5 to 7 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.
author_names: Erik Brynjolfsson

Lorin M Hitt
title: Computing Productivity: Firm Level Evidence
venue: Review of Economics and Statistics
year: 2003

abstract: The authors look at differences in the scope and depth of pro competitive regulatory reforms and privatization policies as a possible source of cross country dispersion in growth outcomes. They suggest that, despite extensive liberalization and privatization in the OECD area, the cross country variation of regulatory settings has increased in recent years, lining up with the increasing dispersion in growth. The authors then investigate empirically the regulation growth link using data that cover a large set of manufacturing and service industries in OECD countries over the past two decades and focusing on multifactor productivity (MFP) which plays a crucial role in GDP growth and accounts for a significant share of its cross country variance. Regressing MFP on both economywide indicators of regulation and privatization and industry level indicators of entry liberalization, the authors find evidence that reforms promoting private governance and competition (where these are viable) tend to boost productivity. In manufacturing the gains to be expected from lower entry barriers are greater the further a given country is from the technology leader. So, regulation limiting entry may hinder the adoption of existing technologies, possibly by reducing competitive pressures, technology spillovers, or the entry of new high technology firms. At the same time, both privatization and entry liberalization are estimated to have a positive impact on productivity in all sectors. These results offer an interpretation to the observed recent differences in growth patterns across OECD countries, in particular between large continental European economies and the United States. Strict product market regulations and lack of regulatory reforms are likely to underlie the relatively poorer productivity performance of some European countries, especially in those industries where Europe has accumulated a technology gap (such as information and communication technology related industries) These results also offer useful insights for non OECD countries. In particular, they point to the potential benefits of regulatory reforms and privatization, especially in those countries with large technology gaps and strict regulatory settings that curb incentives to adopt new technologies.
author_names: Stefano Scarpetta

Giuseppe Nicoletti
title: Regulation, Productivity and Growth: OECD Evidence
year: 2003

abstract: The news that the early retirement trend has been reversed and current older workers plan to work past conventional retirement ages has been widely heralded. Managers have been encouraged to make adjustments to differences in job conditions that are important to older workers. We use social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity as a framework for examining six dimensions of job quality for their impact on employee engagement among several groups of older and younger workers at different points in the cycle of their careers in a large retail setting. Employees (N 6047) were surveyed as part of a large scale research project. Exploratory factor analyses identified commonalities among 27 job quality variables and four reliable factors. Regression analyses estimated the relationship between four job conditions and employee engagement. Although the relative weights of the factors differed by career stage, the same factors: (1) Supervisor Support and Recognition; (2) Schedule Satisfaction; and (3) Job Clarity were significant predictors of employee engagement for all age groups; (4) Career Development was a predictor for all but the retirement eligible employees. Findings reveal the importance of recognizing age diversity among both young and old employees. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright (c) 2010 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.
author_names: Jacquelyn Boone James

Sharon McKechnie

Jennifer E Swanberg
title: Predicting employee engagement in an age diverse retail workforce
year: 2011

abstract: The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets so called big data will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey's Business Technology Office. Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.
author_names: J Manyika
title: Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
year: 2011

abstract: There is considerable evidence that producer level churning contributes substantially to aggregate (industry) productivity growth, as more productive businesses displace less productive ones. However, this research has been limited by the fact that producer level prices are typically unobserved; thus within industry price differences are embodied in productivity measures. If prices reflect idiosyncratic demand or market power shifts, high "productivity" businesses may not be particularly efficient, and the literature's findings might be better interpreted as evidence of entering businesses displacing less profitable, but not necessarily less productive, exiting businesses. In this paper, we investigate the nature of selection and productivity growth using data from industries where we observe producer level quantities and prices separately. We show there are important differences between revenue and physical productivity. A key dissimilarity is that physical productivity is inversely correlated with plant level prices while revenue productivity is positively correlated with prices. This implies that previous work linking (revenue based) productivity to survival has confounded the separate and opposing effects of technical efficiency and demand on survival, understating the true impacts of both. We further show that young producers charge lower prices than incumbents, and as such the literature understates the productivity advantage of new producers and the contribution of entry to aggregate productivity growth.
author_names: Lucia S Foster

John C Haltiwanger

Chad Syverson
title: Reallocation, Firm Turnover, and Efficiency: Selection on Productivity or Profitability?
year: 2005