Productivity Growth

Rapid population growth ceased in Canada when the baby boom ended, and gave way to the baby bust; rapid labour force growth lasted for another two decades. As the century closes growth has become much more dependent on immigration. This paper reviews the consequences of the boom-bust sequence for the age distribution of the population and labour force since the 1950s, and provides measures of labour productivity growth over that period. It considers also the implications of three alternative projections extending to 2036, and calculates for each the productivity growth that would be required to attain specified rates of increase in total and per capita gross domestic product. It concludes that to sustain even modest gains in GDP per capita will soon require gains in productivity greater than have been observed in the last two decades.

India is one of the world's largest and oldest agricultural societies. Agriculture is a part of livelihood of most of the rural households in India. During the past decades the agriculture sector in India has undergone wide ranging changes in terms of productivity, growth pattern, influenced by market fluctuations, urbanization and change in climatic conditions. About 50 years ago farming

The transportation equipment industry is one of the few Canadian industries that is as productive as its U.S. counterpart. However, labour productivity growth in the Canadian transportation equipment industry declined from 4.5 per cent per year in 1981-2000 to 1.7 per cent per year in 2000-2007. This article investigates whether restructuring and the reallocation of output and resources within the industry after 2000 contributed to this decline. It shows that the dramatic decline in productivity growth was mainly due to the slowdown in productivity growth in sub-industries, which can largely be traced to the decline in labour productivity growth of continuing plants. Finally, the article shows that even if the Canadian industry mix were the same as the U.S. mix, the productivity growth profile of the Canadian transportation equipment industry would not change.

This document analyzes ways to improve rural mobilization, by providing means of transportation, and affordable services for rural populations in developing countries, who by and large, lack access to transport infrastructure, and services, aggravating socioeconomic development, and poverty conditions. Several factors hamper the development of transport mobilization, and influence promotion efforts, despite budgets supporting transports improvements. In addition, markets do not provide transport services to regions where the demand is weak, i.e., the poorest segments, and less mobile communities are left behind. An integrated approach is deemed necessary, if investments are to provide sound economic and social improvements. Expansion of road networks is certainly important, though not at the expense of secondary roads, and rural roads, while the importance of private, and commercial transportation means (be it motorized or not) should neither be disregarded. Rather, favorable polici...

Downloadable! Poverty in Bolivia continues to be among the highest in Latin America despite decades of concerted national and international efforts to reduce it. Bolivia has meticulously followed the recommendations of the Washington consensus at the same time as external aid ...

Pakistan is the 15th largest producer of sugar in the world, 5th largest in terms of area under sugar cultivation and 60th in yield. The sugar industry is the 2nd largest agro based industry which comprises of 81 sugar mills. With this scenario, Pakistan has to import sugar which exposes it to the effects of shortage and rising prices in the world. The present sugar crisis has opened up new avenues for researcher to analyse the performance and efficiency of the firms in this sector. Total factor productivity plays a significant role in measuring the performance of a firm which ultimately affects the shareholder’s value. This paper analyses the performance of sugar firms in Pakistan and estimate/calculate the Malmquist total factor productivity growth indices using non-parametric approach. TFP growth is further decomposed into technical, scale and managerial efficiency change using balanced panel data of 20 sugar firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange for the period 1998 to 2007. The...

Given the concern about the low growth rates in African countries, this paper deals with the issue of how to increase the said growth rates by using South Africa as a case study. This paper attempts to answer this question by examining the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP)and productivity growth. We utilise the theoretical insights from the Solow (1956) growth model and its extension by Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992). Our empirical methodology is based on the London School of Economics Hendry’s General to Specific Instrumental Variable method and Gregory and Hansen’s (1996a; 1996b) structural break technique. Our findings imply that variables like human capital, trade openness, foreign direct investment, financial efficiency, democracy and financial reforms improves TFP and productivity growth in South Africa. Importantly, the key determinants appear to be democracy and financial liberalisation.

This paper analyses the rate of technical progress at Portuguese airports between 1990 and 2000, using a stochastic cost frontier method. A translog frontier model is used and the maximum likelihood estimation technique is employed to estimate the empirical model. We estimate the efficient scores and disentangle the rate of technical progress into three components: pure technical progress, non-neutral technical progress and scale-augmenting technical progress. The results show that the average score is 88%, denoting a relatively high degree of waste, despite the fact that technical change contributed to a reduction in costs.

Using recent advances in time-varying spectral methods, this research analyses the growth cycles of productivity for three economies: that of the euro area, the US and the UK. The methodology uses a discrete wavelet transform (MODWT), a continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and also Hilbert wavelet pairs in order to analyze bivariate time series in terms of conventional frequency domain measures from spectral analysis. The …ndings are that there appears to be cycles at various frequencies, apart from the usual longer cycle that the economics literature focuses on, and there is apparently little signi…cant correlation or coherence between productivity cycles between the three, signifying that country-idiosyncratic factors are much more likely to drive productivity than international factors.

Thomas Palley argues that the causes of the †œGreat Recession†are not primarily to be found in the asset bubble that was allowed to inflate in the housing market and in the financial sector. The bubbles actually reflect the longer-term basis for stagnation that originate in the macro-economic structure of the US. He presents two major dimensions of these structural problems. The first problem is the entrenchment of a †œneoliberal†growth model that is hegemonic in the minds of politicians and the economics ...

R&D investment has been widely regarded as an important input for firms, particularly for high-tech firms, to achieve competitive advantage within their industry. Hence, a number of high-tech firms are now investing substantial amounts into R&D. Since R&D efforts enable firms to raise the competitive advantage, one noticeable and interesting issue expected to know is the degree to which R&D investment influences firm output performance. In Taiwan, much greater emphasis is also being placed into R&D investment in the high-tech industries; however, R&D output performance has never been seriously examined within this sector. Since the island's electronics industry is widely regarded as the most promising industry in the ‘high-tech sector’, and is expected to place greatest emphasis on its R&D efforts, we take the electronics firms as our analytical sample.This paper therefore sets out to estimate the impact of R&D on firm performance, in terms of productivity growth and the rate of return on investment, within the electronics industry in Taiwan, whilst also examining the Schumpeterian hypothesis, that R&D performance is an increasing function of firm size. Our examination of R&D performance is based on a panel sample of 83 large electronics firms, completely balanced over the period from 1994 to 2000, with series data of R&D capital also being constructed. Based upon the extended Cobb-Douglas production function, a random effects model is developed with the estimations revealing that the output elasticity of R&D is around 0.19 and the average rate of return on R&D is around 22%. These findings clearly demonstrate that investment in R&D by these electronics firms has had an impact on their competitive advantage. Compared to the findings of previous studies, where the analytical unit of data was at firm level, here the rate of return on R&D is consistent with similar estimates for the US and UK, but lower than those for Japan. However, our estimations do not provide support for the hypothesis that the impact of R&D on productivity is an increasing function of firm size.

Abstract. In this paper, we make a comparison of industry output, inputs and productivity growth and levels between seven advanced economies (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States). Our industry-level growth accounts make use of input data on labour quantity (hours) and composition (schooling levels), and distinguish between six different types of capital assets (including three information and communication technology (ICT) assets). The comparisons of levels rely ...

We calibrate an endogenous growth model to study the effect of the quality of human capital on productivity growth in a sample of thirty developed and developing countries for the period 1980 to 2007. We measure quality of human capital by relative cognitive skills. These are country scores in mathematics and science reported in Trends in International Mathematics and Science (TIMMS). The correlation between the relative quality of human capital and productivity growth is evident in the data for the developed countries. And, cross-country differences in the quality of human capital for a number of developed countries are highly positively associated with cross-country differences in productivity growth. The picture is significantly different for the developing countries in our sample.

Agricultural Land Redistribution: Toward Greater Consensus addresses a major policy dilemma: how to benefit from the development gains agricultural land redistribution is expected to generate while avoiding the losses caused by the highly imperfect ways redistribution is generally implemented. The authors address this issue through a broad historical perspective and a world tour of case studies. They conclude that flexibility is needed when selecting transfer mechanisms, in particular seeking a balance between subsidized market transactions, land taxation, and expropriation; when introducing effective conflict resolution mechanisms during redistribution; when establishing secure property rights for beneficiaries; and when giving support to the new farmers so that they rapidly become competitive. The assessment is sobering; it points to actual gains as well as to numerous unresolved difficulties. The authors rightly note that the lack of solid impact evaluations complicates the task of identifying the best process for successful implementation. This book provides valuable information on a subject that remains incompletely understood, yet central to development.