Labor-intensive Manufacturing Industries Research Articles

The impact of digital economy on green total factor productivity considering the labor-technology-pollution factors

The digital economy provides new impetus for the high-quality development of manufacturing industry. Through the DEA-Malmquist model and panel regression model, this paper confirmed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the development of digital economy and the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of manufacturing industry. The research result is as follows: (1) the development of digital economy can enhance the overall GTFP of manufacturing industry. (2) The green technology progress brought by the development of digital economy is the main path to promote the GTFP of manufacturing industry. (3) The heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of digital economy on GTFP of high pollution manufacturing industry is significantly positive, the impact of labor-intensive manufacturing industry is significantly negative, and the impact of technology intensive manufacturing industry is not obvious. The contributions of this study are as follow. In terms of theory, this study theoretically continues Solow’s classical theory, demonstrating the scientific nature of digital technology progress in promoting GTFP growth. In empirical analysis, this study build a new digital economy development level evaluation index system based on the perspective of manufacturing industry. In addition, this study also add a labor-technology-pollution perspective for the development of relevant policies.

The impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on China's manufacturing carbon emissions

This paper investigates the impact of FDI on carbon emissions in China's manufacturing sector, using statistical data from 2003 to 2020 as a reference. To account for the heterogeneity of manufacturing industries, we classify them into three categories based on input factors: resource-intensive, technology-intensive, and labor-intensive. Our main findings are as follows: there is a negative correlation between FDI and CO2 emissions in manufacturing. Specifically, FDI has a positive effect on reducing carbon emissions in capital-intensive, technology-intensive, and labor-intensive manufacturing industries, with the strongest effect observed in labor-intensive industries. Foreign investment can contribute to improving energy efficiency in China's manufacturing sector, and there is potential for environmental regulation to further reduce carbon emissions in resource-intensive manufacturing. By analyzing the impact of FDI on carbon emissions in manufacturing and the role of manufacturing heterogeneity in carbon emissions, we aim to provide recommendations and strategies to help reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing industries.

Domestically “Flying Geese”: Regional Manufacturing Investment Flows within China

Abstract This paper examines the evolving patterns of bilateral city-to-city manufacturing investment flows from 2000 to 2015 in China, which are aggregated from detailed firm-level investment transactions based on the administrative business registration database. The coastal regions were a more favorable destination for manufacturing investment prior to 2006 despite their higher wage levels. Since then, the trend has reversed, that is, the inland regions have attracted a growing share of manufacturing investment. The pattern is more pronounced for labor-intensive manufacturing industries. The wage gap between coastal and inland cities is the main driver behind the giant “flying geese”—the relocation of manufacturing firms from coastal to inland areas.

Impact of the Transforming and Upgrading of China’s Labor-Intensive Manufacturing Industry on the Labor Market

The transforming and upgrading of China’s labor-intensive manufacturing sector is profoundly affecting the low-end labor market. However, there are few empirical studies that focus on labor-intensive manufacturing industries and that explore the impact of their transforming and upgrading on the labor market. Based on the wage and quantity of employment in the labor market, this paper examines the impact and the mechanism of the transforming and upgrading of China’s labor-intensive manufacturing industry on the labor market, using industry panel data from 2011 to 2019. The results show that the transforming and upgrading of labor-intensive manufacturing: (1) significantly improves the average wage of labor, but reduces the quantity of employment, and that this effect varies for different industry segments; (2) improves the average wage of labor through human capital factors and reduces the quantity of employment through labor productivity. The results suggest that we should focus on the impact of the transforming and upgrading of labor-intensive manufacturing on employment to achieve the synergistic development of employment quantity and quality, and ultimately promote sustainable labor market development.

Decomposition and scenario analysis of final demand embedded manufacturing consumption emissions: insights from the province-level data.

In order to support the emissions reduction options in manufacturing industry effectively, it is necessary to quantify the final demand embedded manufacturing consumption (DEMC) emissions which can be estimated by converting intermediate manufacturing consumption into all final demand categories. Here, we quantify the DEMC emissions in China's 30 provinces during 2007-2017 using a multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model and the modified hypothetical extraction method (HEM). Then, we analyze impacts of four factors (including emissions multipliers, consumption structure, investment efficiency, and investment scale) on the DEMC emissions. Finally, considering a large driving effect of investment scale on manufacturing emissions, we conduct four scenarios to quantify the mitigation potential of DEMC emissions during 2020-2035. We find that from 2007 to 2012, the DMEC emissions increased doubled, while during 2012-2017, it decreased from 1217 to 634 Mt. The capital-intensive manufacturing and the labor-intensive manufacturing industries were main sources of intra- and inter-sectoral emissions, respectively. Investment scale was the main driver of the growth in DEMC emissions during 2007-2015, while it led to a reduction of DEMC emissions during 2015-2017. Emission multipliers had the largest positive impact on the reduction of DEMC emissions during the whole period. Consumption structure increased DEMC emissions during 2007-2012, while with the consumption structure shift towards knowledge-intensive manufacturing industry, it induced a reduction of DEMC emissions during 2012-2017. Moreover, implementing an integrated mitigation measures (including reducing emissions multipliers, decreasing investment efficiency, and adjusting consumption structure) could help China to realize the emissions peaking target. However, there are still 8 provinces whose DEMC emissions are unlikely to peak before 2030.

Does Fiscal Expenditure Promote the Upgrading of Regional Manufacturing Industry? Empirical Test Based on the Dual Perspective of Infrastructure and Basic Public Services

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee set the tone that China’s manufacturing industry should upgrade to advanced, intelligent and high quality. In the traditional theory of industrial structure upgrading, fiscal expenditure is not the main influencing factor. In the new pattern of “dual circulation” development of Chinese economy, the important role of government in economic development should not be ignored in the study of the high-end upgrading of manufacturing industry. Using the panel data of 28 provinces in China from 2008 to 2016, this paper deeply studies the economic effect of the most important expenditure on basic public services and infrastructure on the upgrading of manufacturing industry, as well as the regional heterogeneity and the nonlinear characteristics of the technological progress stage. It is found that the economic effect of general budget expenditure and basic public service expenditure on the high-end upgrading of manufacturing structure shows the characteristics of strong heterogeneity and marginal decline, which mainly comes from the promotion effect of the two types of fiscal expenditure in the eastern region and the hindrance effect in the central and western regions. Especially in the five western provinces where industrialization is slow and heavily dependent on transfer payments, infrastructure expenditure and basic public service expenditure show negative economic effects around 2010, but this does not completely mean the failure of the policy effect of local governments. Poverty reduction and poverty alleviation in such underdeveloped areas often rely more on the development of labor-intensive manufacturing industry. With the improvement of the level of innovative technological progress, the role of basic public service expenditure in promoting the upgrading of manufacturing industry will be gradually strengthened. This paper holds that under the new pattern, the eastern provinces should increase investment in information infrastructure, promote the reform of affordable housing, and release the restrictions on both the household registration of high-skilled talents and the school district of children’s basic education. The central provinces should give further play to the role of the market in allocating resources, and focus on improving the quality of public services such as education and medical treatment to the eastern region, so as to better undertake the transfer of high-skilled talents and manufacturing industry in the eastern region. For special provinces with slow industrialization and mainly relying on central transfer payments, we can appropriately increase the proportion of special transfer payments, strengthen the guidance of subsidies and financial policies on social capital, and stimulate the vitality of market players. Under the background of “tax cut and fee reduction”, this paper provides empirical evidence for the improvement of government fiscal expenditure efficiency, the regional policy design of the upgrading of manufacturing industry, and the optimization of fiscal expenditure structure.

English

This study deals with industrial policy, an issue that has been hotly debated in economic development. It argues that strategic and proactive industrial policy is a key to unlock the potential and wade through industrialization for low-income countries such as Ethiopia where market failures are pervasive. More specifically, it argues that industrial policy should be tailored to factors endowment structure. In the case of Ethiopia, as its economic structure is yet to transform substantially from agriculture to manufacturing, the current policy focus should be on labor-intensive sectors. Using the analytical framework of new structural economics supported with the primary survey data covering 80 manufacturing firms and secondary data sources, a comprehensive analysis has been conducted to explore the potentials, latecomer’s advantages, and the binding constraints of labor-intensive manufacturing industries in Ethiopia. Accordingly, it proposes five policy domains to unlock the labor-intensive manufacturing potentials of Ethiopia: Facilitating the linkage between agriculture and manufacturing industry along the value chain; fostering industrial park and cluster-based industrial development; strengthening the cooperation between government and the private sector; improving doing business environment; enhancing the industrial upgrading and diversification along with the changing endowment structure.   Key words: Industrial policy, industrialization, labor-intensive manufacturing, structural transformation.

Research On The Impact Of Producer Services Import On China's Manufacturing Industry's Climbing Global Value Chain

Intermediate investment in producer services is an effective way to promote the manufacturing industry to climb the global value chain. This paper uses the export added value data of OECD-TiVA database to calculate the export technical complexity of 17 types of manufacturing industries in China, so as to measure the position of various industries in the value chain, and empirically test the impact of producer services import on the promotion of the position of China's manufacturing value chain. The results show that producer services import has a significant positive impact on the promotion of China's manufacturing value chain, and the promotion effect has industry heterogeneity. In the labor-intensive manufacturing industry, the import of producer services plays the strongest role in promoting the rise of its value chain, followed by the capital intensive manufacturing industry.

Energy Use and Labor Productivity in Ethiopia: The Case of the Manufacturing Industry

This study investigates the effect of energy use on labor productivity in the Ethiopian manufacturing industry. It uses panel data for the manufacturing industry groups to estimate the coefficients using the dynamic panel estimator. The study’s results confirm that energy use increases manufacturing labor productivity. The coefficients for the control variables are in keeping with theoretical predictions. Capital positively augments productivity in the industries. Based on our results, technology induces manufacturing’s labor productivity. Likewise, more labor employment induces labor productivity due to the dominance of labor-intensive manufacturing industries in Ethiopia. Alternative model specifications provide evidence of a robust link between energy and labor productivity in the Ethiopian manufacturing industry. Our results imply that there needs to be more focus on the efficient use of energy, labor, capital, and technology to increase the manufacturing industry’s labor productivity and to overcome the premature deindustrialization patterns being seen in Ethiopia.

Outward foreign direct investment and employment in Japan\u2019s manufacturing industry

This paper uses the input–output analysis to investigate the impact of Japan’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic production and employment in the manufacturing industry. With the expansion of Japan’s overseas business, there is a fear that the production of overseas affiliates will replace parent country’s export and output. As a consequence, it will cause job losses in the home country, especially in labor-intensive manufacturing industry. On the other hand, outward FDI also has export promotion effect on domestic economy of the home country. Parent enterprises need to export capital and intermediate goods for the construction and production of affiliates abroad in the early stage of outward FDI. This effect will enhance the export and employment of the home country. The results of this paper suggest that the negative impact of export substitution effect and inverse import effect is greater than the positive impact of export promotion effect from 2000 to 2014, which means that the total effect of Japan’s outward FDI is negative and it causes the decrease in domestic production in Japan’s manufacturing industry. As a result, it leads to the unemployment in Japan, which is called the “Hollowing-Out” effect. Also, this paper compares the calculation result of the period 2000–2014 with the period of 1990–1999 and finds that the “Hollowing-Out” of Japan has become more serious in recent years with the increase in Japan’s outward FDI. It is necessary to change the structure of economy in Japan to alleviate the unemployment problem caused by outward FDI.

How does toll road impact accessibilities, trades, and investments in short term? A case study of Cipali toll road in West Java, Indonesia

To increase inter-region connectivity, the Indonesian government initiated infrastructure projects such as toll roads, airport, highways, as well as agriculture ones throughout the countries. One of the big projects in road infrastructure was the Cikampek–Palimanan (Cipali) toll road in West Java with a budget of more than USD1 billion which started to operate in July 2015. This paper is aimed to evaluate the impact of the toll road on accessibilities, trades, and investments in the region it traverses. To carry out the analysis, we used qualitative approach, difference-in-difference approach, and ANOVA, utilizing three kinds of data. The first data is collected from a survey of 331 small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the logistics and the hotel and restaurant industries. The second one is bank loan data sourced from Bank Indonesia, while the third one is investment data from Investment Coordinating Board of Indonesia (BKPM). After two years of its operation, Cipali toll road has increased accessibility, mobility, trade, and investment in the region it traverses. The travel time was reduced by 39%, while the cargo volume of the local businesses increased by 30% to 40%. These led to an improvement of wholesale trade volume in almost all regencies. However, SMEs in the hotel and restaurant industry along the traditional northern coastal highway in Subang, Indramayu, and Brebes experienced a decline due to the traffic shifting. Meanwhile, investments from national companies especially those of labor-intensive manufacturing industries flowed significantly especially to Subang and Majalengka, which reflected a “sorting effect”. However, investments from local and foreign businesses did not increase significantly yet after 2.5 years of toll operation. To reap the benefit from the presence of Cipali toll road, the local governments should improve the ease of doing business to attract investments that boost employment in return. In addition, given a better accessibility from Greater Jakarta and a large number of potential visitors passing through the toll road, local businesses in the trade sector would benefit if they could promote the local attractions such as in tourism activities supported by the local government. The latter strategy should also be implemented by the local governments and local businesses in the northern coastal traditional route to minimize the negative impact of the toll road due to the traffic shifting. This strategy should be strengthened through increasing connectivity from the toll exits to local business areas and through increasing the ease of doing business.

Effect of total productive maintenance practices on manufacturing performance

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of total productive maintenance (TPM) practices on manufacturing performance of textile and apparel manufacturing firms.Design/methodology/approach– A self-administered survey questionnaire was used for data collection. A total of 236 usable responses resulted in a 78 percent response rate from 30 textile and apparel firms. Correlation and regression analysis was performed using SPSS software to identify the effect of TPM on manufacturing performance.Findings– The results show that all the TPM practices have positive and significant relationship with manufacturing performance and significantly improve cost effectiveness, product quality, on-time delivery and volume flexibility.Practical implications– The study presented in this paper offers academics and practitioners a better understanding of the relationship and impact of the TPM practices on the manufacturing performances. Thus practitioners will be able to make better and more effective decisions about the implementation of TPM practices.Originality/value– The understanding of the effect of TPM practices on manufacturing performance is timely for labor intensive manufacturing industries such as textile and apparel since it has not been researched adequately. Therefore, findings will impact the global textile and apparel industry positively.

The Role of Host Country Factors and Institutional Framework for FDI Spillovers in Ethiopia: The Case of Manufacturing Sector

The Role of Host Country Factors and Institutional Framework for FDI Spillovers in Ethiopia: The Case of Manufacturing Sector

Industrial spatial agglomeration using distance-based approach in Beijing, China

To study the difference of industrial location among different industries, this article is to test the spatial agglomeration across industries and firm sizes at the city level. Our research bases on a unique plant-level data set of Beijing and employs a distance-based approach, which considers space as continuous. Unlike previous studies, we set two sets of references for service and manufacturing industries respectively to adapt to the investigation in the intra-urban area. Comparing among eight types of industries and different firm sizes, we find that: 1) producer service, high-tech industries and labor-intensive manufacturing industries are more likely to cluster, whereas personal service and capital-intensive industries tend to be randomly dispersed in Beijing; 2) the spillover of the co-location of firms is more important to knowledge-intensive industries and has more significant impact on their allocation than business-oriented services in the intra-urban area; 3) the spatial agglomeration of service industries are driven by larger establishments, whereas manufacturing industries are mixed.

The Role of Host Country Factors and Institutional Framework for FDI Spillovers in Ethiopia: The Case of Manufacturing Sector

The Role of Host Country Factors and Institutional Framework for FDI Spillovers in Ethiopia: The Case of Manufacturing Sector

Spatial-temporal pattern evolution of manufacturing geographical agglomeration and influencing factors of old industrial base: A case of Jilin Province, China

The primary object of this paper is to examine the spatial-temporal pattern evolution of manufacturing geographical agglomeration of the old industrial base. Industrial spatial agglomeration index and concentration ratio are used in this paper. Multiple linear regression models are also applied to try to explore the internal driving mechanisms on manufacturing geographical agglomeration. The results show that: 1) the manufacturing agglomeration degree of Jilin Province is increasing gradually. The spatial polarization structure is visible; and the central region is the agglomeration area, in addition, the manufacturing industries of Changchun Proper present a trend of dispersion; 2) the structure of manufacturing industries has changed, and the concentration ratio of labor-intensive manufacturing industry is declining, while the proportions of technology-intensive and capital-intensive manufacturing industry are relatively rising; 3) marketing level, location accessibility, labor resources, capital, science and technology innovation capability, scale economy and the level of globalization affect manufacturing agglomeration with different degree. There are significant differences of the effects about employment, technology, the quality of residents and the export-oriented market on the industrial concentration ratio; 4) in the future, the impact of policy and institution, export-oriented market and quality of resident on manufacturing geographical agglomeration pattern will be more profound.

Feminization, Defeminization, and Structural Change in Manufacturing

The paper uses accounting decomposition methods to analyze changes in female shares of manufacturing employment for 36 countries at different levels of development from 1981 to 2008, for the manufacturing sector as a whole and within a group of labor-intensive manufacturing industries for selected countries. For the majority of countries, feminizing and defeminizing, labor-intensive industries contributed most to changes in female shares of total manufacturing employment and within-industry effects were more important than employment reallocation effects. Within labor-intensive industries, textiles, and apparel were the largest drivers of changes in female shares of employment and technological upgrading was associated with defeminization.

Information Technology, Economy and Banking Sector

It would be an understatement to say that the Information Technology (IT) is having an enormous influence on today's global economy. It would be more appropriate to say that IT is now close to becoming the most important driver of the global economy. The competitiveness of a country's economy and well being is getting closely aligned to its ability to innovate and participate in the IT industry. While the industrial revolution was initiated in the labor-intensive manufacturing industry by automotive pioneers like Ford, it is clear that the third revolution is driven by the knowledgebased services sector. In the last decade we have begun to see a new revolution- the information revolution. This paper focused on Importance of IT, Business Transformation, Impact of IT on economy and various sectors.

Intelligent multi-objective decision-making model with RFID technology for production planning

A multi-objective production planning problem in the labor-intensive manufacturing industry is investigated. An intelligent and real-time multi-objective decision-making model is developed to provide timely and effective solutions for this problem by integrating RFID technology with intelligent optimization techniques, in which RFID technology is used to collect real-time production data, a novel (μ/ρ+λ)-evolution strategy process with self-adaptive population size and novel recombination operation is proposed and integrated with effective non-dominated sorting and pruning techniques to generate Pareto optimal solutions for real-world production. Experiments based on industrial data were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model. Experimental results show that the proposed model can effectively solve the investigated problem by providing production planning solutions superior to industrial solutions.

Dynamics of manufacturing productivity: lesson learnt from labor intensive industries

PurposeThis study is designed to examine the impact of favorable working environment (FWE) and R&D on manufacturing productivity of labor intensive industries. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to generate quantitative evidence of the effect of FWE and R&D‐based manufacturing process on outputs and productivity.Design/methodology/approachConvenience sampling method has been used to conduct this study. This method provides the opportunity for selecting those manufacturing industries that are convenient to get access for collecting relevant information. Three categories of labor intensive manufacturing industries such as category A, B and C have been chosen to perform this research. Industrial category A represents the manufacturing operations which are based on skill of labor. Category B is a group of industries which provides the FWE the ability to utilize the potential of skill in the manufacturing process. However, category C is a specialized group of industries and its manufacturing process is dependent on R&D. The operating data of inputs cost and the revenue of corresponding outputs have been gathered from audited documents of the relevant sample industries and the data have been analyzed by using standard statistical techniques in order to establish the relationship between dependent and independent variables.FindingsIt is found that the industrial category B has spent about 1 percent of revenue on FWE and gained 9.5 percent higher productivity compare to industrial category A. However, the result has shown that the expenditure on FWE is positively associated with productivity (r<0.5). Whereas, the study has revealed that industrial category C has spent about 1.5 percent of revenue on R&D activities for improving manufacturing process and gained 20 higher productivity compare to industrial category A. Nevertheless, the expenditure on R&D is strongly correlated with productivity (r>0.7). The study concludes that FWE as proxy of job satisfaction of workforce and R&D on manufacturing process are value‐added inputs for labor intensive industries and it is positively associated with manufacturing productivity.Originality/valueThis paper presents three original case studies on labor intensive manufacturing industries. This study has addressed an important issue of labor intensive manufacturing industries and generated quantitative evidence of the impact of FWE and R&D activities on productivity. These issues have been well researched in developed and many developing countries in capital‐intensive industries, but no dedicated study is available that has addressed this issue from the perspective of the highly labor intensive industries such as the garment industry. The findings of this research would enrich the present knowledge stock of manufacturing systems. Eventually, the findings would be the basis for further research on manufacturing process for enhancing performance. Based on this concept, this study would be valuable to policy makers, academics and government agencies.