Capital-labour Substitution Research Articles

Gender and artisanal and small-scale mining: Exploring women's livelihood and occupational roles in formalised settings

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has often been touted as an employment-creation avenue for millions of operators worldwide, including women. This employment-generation narrative has, however, been occasioned by the immense scholarly focus on the informal and labour-intensive segments of ASM operations. Exploring the livelihood and occupational roles of women in formalised ASM settings, data for our inquiry comes mainly from employees of two formalised ASM firms in Ghana. Our study suggests that contrary to the dominant narrative, women's employment avenues remain minimal in formalised settings through capital-labour substitution mechanisms. Our findings further indicate that women play differentiated, high positional roles in formalised settings, contrary to their lower-to-middle-rung roles in ASM labour structures in informal settings. In addition, occupational health and safety mechanisms differ from those at informal ASM sites. Disaggregation of employment figures in relation to female workers in ASM would help to tailor specific policies that encapsulate the duality of operations and attract more women into formalised settings where employment conditions are better.

Labour Demand Effects of Internationalization in the Colombian Manufacturing Industry, 1974-2015

Colombia experienced a major structural change in the early nineties. This structural change is related to major trade and labour market reforms undertaken around 1992, which is considered the inflection year. This paper focuses on evaluating whether the structural change in international trade exposure significantly altered the employment response to wage changes in the manufacturing industry. Hamermesh’s (1993) framework is used to explain the total employment effect, which is made of the substitution and scale effects. This total effect is empirically quantified, and its two components disentangled. We find that the employment elasticity of a wage change rose from -1.05 in 1974-1991 to -1.56 in 1992-2015. By components, the substitution effect rose from -0.68 to -1.19, and the scale effect remained stable at -0.38. These findings suggest that trade liberalization has had negative consequences on workers’ welfare. A larger sensitivity of labour demand has been associated with a larger workers’ tax burden and a greater instability in labour market outcomes (Rodrik, 1997). Therefore, the increases in payroll taxation experienced during the nineties may have led to job destruction and an amplified workers’ tax burden, while capital-labour substitution processes may have accelerated on account of the larger employment sensitivity.

Decomposition Factors Household Energy Subsidy Consumption in Indonesia: Kaya Identity and Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index Approach

For decades, the subsidy had prompted excessive and wasteful while offering little motivation to boost energy efficiency or reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aimed to measure household subsidy energy by examining the relationship between the other ten variables. The Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) and decomposition index were deployed to recognize the determinant effects that drive household's subsidy energy consumption. This study also presented an ARDL model applied. The robustness of the Granger Causality, Long-run, and Short-run causality during 1990-2017 was assessed. Based on LMDI, we found out that Population, Income Per Capita, Ratio National Renewal Energy over Fuel Fossil, Gross Capital Stock, Urban Household Consumption, and Ratio Household Subsidy were the positive factors that aggravate the change in household energy subsidy. The negative sign of Ratio National Energy Intensity effect, Ratio Fossil Renewal Energy effect, Ratio Capital Labour substitution, and Ratio Household over Labour Force signified the decreasing significance of less household energy subsidy. On the ECM, we identified a negative sign speed-of-adjustment and significant at 1%. It implied that all the ten variable effects were converging in the long run after an experience shocks. The equation parameters were considered stable since the CUSUM gets inside the two critical lines. Additional RESET test of the stability to ascertain whether the estimated model was linear or correctly specified has been performed.

Decomposition Factors Household Energy Subsidy Consumption in Indonesia: Kaya Identity and LMDI Approach

For decades, the subsidy had prompted excessive and wasteful while offering little motivation to boost energy efficiency or reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aimed to measure household subsidy energy by examining the relationship between the other ten variables. The Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) and decomposition index were deployed to recognize the determinant effects that drive household's subsidy energy consumption. This study also presented an ARDL model applied. The robustness of the Granger Causality, Long-run, and Short-run causality during 1990-2017 was assessed. Based on LMDI, we found out that Population, Income Per Capita, Ratio National Renewal Energy over Fuel Fossil, Gross Capital Stock, Urban Household Consumption, and Ratio Household Subsidy were the positive factors that aggravate the change in household energy subsidy. The negative sign of Ratio National Energy Intensity effect, Ratio Fossil Renewal Energy effect, Ratio Capital Labour substitution, and Ratio Household over Labour Force signified the decreasing significance of less household energy subsidy. On the panel ARD-ECM, we identified a negative sign speed-of-adjustment and significant at 1%. It implied that all the ten variable effects were converging in the long run after an experience shocks. The equation parameters were considered stable since the CUSUM gets inside the two critical lines. Additional RESET test of the stability to ascertain whether the estimated model was linear or correctly specified has been performed.

Macroeconomic Growth in Vietnam Transitioned to Market: An Unrestricted VES Framework

The Vietnamese economy has increased at high speed over the transformation decades; however, most recent studies on the economic growth of this country used the Cobb-Douglas or CES (Constant Elasticity of Substitution) production functions, which are unable to explore the relationship between the elasticity of capital-labour substitution and development process, and hence, are not relevant to accessing a dynamic economic system. For that reason, this study is conducted to specify an unrestricted VES (Variable Elasticity of Substitution) production function in a one-sector growth model of Vietnam, highlighted by two characteristics: successful transition from plan to market and rapid progress. The VES is given preference over the CES and the Cobb-Douglas having the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour varying with economic development. By employing a Bayesian nonlinear regression through MCMC methods, the study reported the following findings: (1) the above-unity variable elasticity of capital-labour substitution in an aggregate unrestricted VES function specified for Vietnam shows that the model generates the possibility of endogenous economic growth; (2) the capital share tends to increase, while the labour share faces a downward trend along with the development of Vietnam; (3) the VES is empirically proven through a Bayes factor test to be superior to the CES and Cobb-Douglas for analysis of the growth process of Vietnam, an emerging transition economy.

Working Futures: The ILO, Automation and Digital Work in India

With access to data communication networks and the prevalence of informal work, workers in the global South are rapidly inching closer to confronting the impact of automated or digitally enabled non-standard employment. What are the social and political responses required to face this shifting engagement with the means of automated production and the experience of digital work mediated through privately owned global technology platforms? By examining India’s job market, with a focus on the country’s information technology (IT) industry, this chapter assesses whether the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) focus on labour rights and social protection is suited to addressing the potential for capital–labour substitution and the new ecosystem of software-mediated work. The chapter suggests a new engagement with digital labour, closer scrutiny of unregulated working conditions, and democratic control over tech-enabled digital platforms.

Employment Protection Legislation Impacts on Capital and Skills Composition

The article investigates the effects of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) on capital and skills according to the intensity of international competition. Grounded on a panel data sample for 14 OECD countries and 18 industries from 1988 to 2007, and a difference-in-difference approach, we find that strengthening EPL : (i) leads to a capital-labour substitution in favour of non ICT non RD (ii) lowers ICT capital and, even more severely, RD and (iii) works at the relative disadvantage of low-skilled workers. Strengthening EPL can therefore be an impediment to organizational and so technological change and risk taking on globalized markets. An illustrative simulation suggests that structural reforms weakening EPL could have a significant favorable impact on firms’ ICT and R&D investment and on hiring low-skilled workers.

Capitalism in the 21st Century: A Marxist Perspective

A Marxist understanding of the ills of capitalism is applicable to 21st -century capitalism. Motivated by surpluses, capitalism become global in its endeavour of outsourcing production and capital labour substitution. As a result, the capitalist core established an exploitative relationship with the developing and under-developed third world countries. In order to protect their interests and to keep the antagonistic feelings below the threshold, the bourgeoisie elite utilized every tool available to strengthen their control over the resources, maintained their hegemony and absorb counter-hegemonic ideas. The article is an attempt to understand the Marxist interpretation of capitalism and debate in its relevance to 21st -century international politics. With the help of the Iraq war, the article concludes that Marxism and Marxist inspired theoretical interpretation is the best lens to explain the operation of capitalism at the world stage.

The dynamics of hours worked and technology

The response of hours worked to technology shocks in the postwar US economy has increased over time. We offer a structural interpretation of this important time-varying macroeconomic moment. The time varying patterns captured by a structural VAR are consistent with those obtained from a parsimonious RBC model with a less than unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labour (σ). The observed changes in the response of hours are attributable to increases in the magnitude of the degree of capital-labour substitution. Finally, we conjecture that the observed time-variation in σ is related to changes in the skill composition of the work force and biases in technological change.

Raising the standard: Minimum wages and firm productivity

This paper exploits the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in Britain and subsequent increases in the NMW to identify the effects of minimum wages on productivity. We find that the NMW increased average labour costs for companies that tend to employ low paid workers, both upon the introduction of the NMW and more recently following the Great Recession when many workers experienced pay freezes or wage cuts, but the NMW continued to rise. We find evidence to suggest that companies responded to these increases in labour costs by raising labour productivity. These labour productivity changes did not appear to come about via a reduction in firms' workforce or via capital-labour substitution. Rather they were associated with increases in total factor productivity, as theories of organisational change, training and efficiency wages would suggest.

Labour Market Regulations and Capital Labour Substitution

On the basis of a country*industry unbalanced panel data sample for 14 OECD countries and 18 industries covering the years 1988 to 2007, this study proposes an econometric investigation of the effects of the OECD Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) indicator on four components of total capital and for two skill components of total labor. Relying on a difference-in-difference econometric approach, we find that an increase in EPL has (i) positive and significant effects on the non-ICT capital - labor ratio and the share of high-skill labor; (ii) non-significant effects on the ICT capital – labor ratio; (iii) negative and significant effects for R&D capital – labor ratio and the share of low-skilled labor. These results suggest that firms consider that the strengthening of Employment Protection Legislation is equivalent to a rise in the cost of labour, resulting in capital-to-labour substitution in favour of non-ICT capital and working at the disadvantage of low-skill relatively to high-skill workers. They indicate to the contrary that structural reforms for more labour flexibility weakening this legislation could have a favourable impact on firms’ R&D investment and their hiring of low-skill workers.

Neglected Implications of Neoclassical Capital-Labour Substitution for Investment Theory: Another Criticism of Say's Law

Recent mainstream macroeconomic models take Say's Law for granted. This paper argues that the justification for this assumption is not found in general equilibrium theory but in the ‘neoclassical-synthesis’ (and then monetarist) criticism of Keynes, which relies in a fundamental way on a treatment of investment that turns out to depend not only on neoclassical capital-labour substitution (called into questioned by the Cambridge controversies) but also on an assumption of full labour employment that on the contrary should be a result of the analysis. This paper first criticizes the attempt to justify a negative interest-elastic investment function through adjustment costs, that is, without relying on traditional neoclassical capital-labour substitution, with special attention on the treatment in Romer's advanced textbook. Then it proceeds to its new contribution, the demonstration that an endogenous determination of labour employment raises questions about the capacity of decreases in the real wage to raise employment even accepting neoclassical capital-labour substitution, because when the latter is correctly understood the rate of interest does not suffice to determine investment; hence, there is an inevitable role for the accelerator (and Say's Law is thereby undermined). This was perceived by Dornbusch and Fischer but they did not realize that then reductions of real wages will reduce investment instead of raising it. Thus, the ‘neoclassical synthesis’ reply to Keynes is undermined even apart from the inconsistencies of neoclassical capital theory. So the paper exposes a deficiency of the neoclassical arguments in support of a tendency toward full employment, additional to the inconsistencies revealed by the capital critique.

Estimate of the elasticities of substitution of the CES and translog production functions in Tunisia

On the basis of the CES and translog production functions, this study compares the degrees of capital-labour substitution of a developing country. In order to change the tradition of some modellers, we try to present estimates of substitution elasticity caused by these two production functions applied to the Tunisian economy. In these estimations, we use statistical data about the 1961/2010 period for the five sectors of the global economy by choosing two factors of production. We apply the nonlinear least squares method to estimate the substitution elasticity in each sector of the CES function using the GAMS software and the SURE method in order to estimate the translog function by means of the STATA software. The results indicate a strong similitude between the elasticity substitution estimates for each function, which are significantly below the unity.

The Minimum Wage Affects Them All: Evidence on Employment Spillovers in the Roofing Sector

AbstractThis study contributes to the sparse literature on employment spillovers of minimum wages. We exploit the minimum wage introduction and subsequent increases in the German roofing sector that gave rise to an internationally unprecedented hard bite of a minimum wage. We look at the chances of remaining employed in the roofing sector for workers with and without a binding minimum wage and use the plumbing sector that is not subject to a minimum wage as a suitable benchmark sector. By estimating the counterfactual wage that plumbers would receive in the roofing sector given their characteristics, we are able to identify employment effects along the entire wage distribution. The results indicate that the chances for roofers to remain employed in the sector in eastern Germany deteriorated along the entire wage distribution. Such employment spillovers to workers without a binding minimum wage may result from scale effects and/or capital-labour substitution.

New measures of factor productivity in Australia: a Sato approach

This article derives new results of the Elasticity of Substitution (ES) between capital and labour and factor productivity for Australia, an economy which experienced major economic reform that substantially increased the flexibility of its labour, product and capital markets throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It employs a Sato production function specification which has unique properties that enable the estimation of capital–labour substitution elasticity and changing marginal productivities through time. These estimates reveal that the substitution elasticity and labour productivity in Australia rose significantly from the mid-1960s and remained elevated during the economic reform period. A novel contribution of this article is the depiction of Australia's production isoquants to convey how combining labour and capital to produce real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has changed over recent decades.

The Minimum Wage Affects Them All: Evidence on Employment Spillovers in the Roofing Sector

This paper contributes to the sparse literature on employment spillovers on minimum wages by exploiting the minimum wage introduction and subsequent increases in the German roofing sector that gave rise to an internationally unprecedented hard bite of a minimum wage. We look at the chances of remaining employed in the roofing sector for workers with and without a binding minimum wage and use the plumbing sector that is not subject to a minimum wage as a suitable benchmark sector. By estimating the counterfactual wage that plumbers would receive in the roofing sector given their characteristics, we are able to identify employment effects along the entire wage distribution. The results indicate that the chances for roofers to remain employed in the sector in eastern Germany deteriorated along the entire wage distribution. Such employment spillovers to workers without a binding minimum wage may result from scale effects and/or capital-labour substitution.

The Minimum Wage Affects Them All: Evidence on Employment Spillovers in the Roofing Sector

This paper contributes to the sparse literature on employment spillovers on minimum wages by exploiting the minimum wage introduction and subsequent increases in the German roofing sector that gave rise to an internationally unprecedented hard bite of a minimum wage. We look at the chances of remaining employed in the roofing sector for workers with and without a binding minimum wage and use the plumbing sector that is not subject to a minimum wage as a suitable benchmark sector. By estimating the counterfactual wage that plumbers would receive in the roofing sector given their characteristics, we are able to identify employment effects along the entire wage distribution. The results indicate that the chances for roofers to remain employed in the sector in eastern Germany deteriorated along the entire wage distribution. Such employment spillovers to workers without a binding minimum wage may result from scale effects and/or capital-labour substitution.

POST‐KEYNESIAN EFFECTIVE DEMAND AND CAPITAL–LABOUR SUBSTITUTION

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the relationship between the real wage rate and employment when we induce capital–labour substitution within a Post‐Keynesian Kaleckian model. To avoid the over‐determinacy problem, we consider a non‐homogeneous production function and cost minimization, in contrast to recent work that assumed a homogeneous production function and profit maximization. As a result, we find not only that increasing returns to scale are important in sustaining the long‐run stability condition, but also that if the increasing returns to scale are small, then it is more likely that employment will increase.

The effects of employment protection legislation and financial market imperfections on investment: evidence from a firm-level panel of EU countries

Exploiting information from a panel of European firms we study the joint effect of EPL and financial market imperfections on investment, capital-labour substitution, labour productivity and job reallocation. We find that EPL reduces investment per worker, capital per worker and value added per worker in high reallocation sectors relative to low reallocation sectors, while increasing the average frequency at which firms adjust their capital stock. The reduction in capital per worker and value added per worker is less pronounced in financially sound firms. Also, the propensity to invest appears to increase only in firms that are likely to be financially unconstrained. Overall, poor access to credit markets seems to exacerbate the negative effects of EPL on capital deepening and productivity. —Federico Cingano, Marco Leonardi, Julian Messina and Giovanni Pica

The Effect of Employment Protection Legislation and Financial Market Imperfections on Investment: Evidence from a Firm-Level Panel of EU Countries

This paper analyzes the joint effect of EPL and financial market imperfections on investment, capital-labour substitution, labour productivity and job reallocation in a cross-country framework. In the spirit of Rajan and Zingales (1998) and Ciccone and Papaioannou (2006), we exploit variation in the need for reallocation at the sectoral and aggregate level to assess the average effect of EPL on firms’ policies. Then, exploiting firm-level information we study if the effect of EPL is stronger in firms with lower levels of internal resources. We find that, on average, EPL reduces investment per worker, capital per worker and value added per worker in high reallocation sectors relative to low reallocation sectors. The reduction in the capital-labour ratio is less pronounced in firms with higher internal resources, suggesting that financial constraints exacerbate the negative effects of EPL on capital deepening.