Measures Of Productivity Growth Research Articles

Efficiency and productivity growth in US food manufacturing industries: Exporters, ownership changes, and firm characteristics

AbstractThis study employs a stochastic production frontier framework to measure productivity growth among exporters, non‐exporters, and firms experiencing ownership changes through mergers and acquisitions in US food manufacturing. Analyzing a panel data set that integrates Economic Censuses and transaction‐level exports, the results reveal the coexistence of more productive exporters, driven by technical efficiency, alongside less productive non‐exporters. Exporters in arm's length transactions show productivity growth driven by technical efficiency change, while those in related party transactions benefit mainly from technological change. Firms undergoing ownership changes exhibit positive productivity growth with a greater contribution from technical efficiency compared to those without such changes.

The Impact of Port Total Factor Productivity on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Port Cities: Evidence from the Yangtze River Ports

This paper investigates the relationship between port productivity and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in port cities. The study initially employs the global Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to measure productivity growth in 16 major inland ports along the Yangtze River, obtaining data on the ports’ total factor productivity (TFP). Through an analysis using the panel data model with two-way fixed effects, we find a positive correlation between the improvement of port TFP and the increase in CO2 emissions in port cities. Further panel quantile regression analysis reveals the heterogeneity of this impact, especially in cities with medium and higher CO2 emissions, where the positive effects of TFP on carbon emissions are particularly significant. The study also indicates a threshold effect of port size in the relationship between TFP and CO2 emissions: in smaller ports, the impact of TFP improvement on CO2 emissions is less significant; however, once the port size exceeds a certain threshold, the growth in TFP significantly promotes an increase in CO2 emissions. These findings provide theoretical justification and decision-making references for policymakers to adopt effective measures to mitigate the growth of CO2 emissions while promoting the efficiency of port production.

Productivity measurement: Reassessing the production function from micro to macro

AbstractThe productivity growth slowdown in advanced economies during the early decades of the 21st century has led to renewed interest in economic measurement. Measured productivity growth has largely evaporated, yet in many ways, the average person is better off than at any time in history and technological advance is ever evident. Are we simply, or at least in part, mismeasuring productivity change? More fundamentally, are we measuring an outdated or otherwise less relevant economic concept? What should and can we measure in the interest of developing evidence‐based policy solutions to support productivity growth? This paper reviews some of the recent advances in economic measurement and points to an expanded productivity measurement research agenda arising from these questions.

Manufacturing Productivity Measurement in India: An Evolutionary Trend

We undertake an extensive literature survey and segregate the methods mainly into two approaches: parametric and non-parametric. Further, we categorise the non-parametric techniques into the Growth Accounting Approach and the Deterministic Frontier Approach. The evaluation and development of methods used in the study of productivity growth measurement is a continuous process over the years, even if we found a longstanding critical debate from the classical school, popularly known as the Cambridge controversy. This article presents a holistic review of methods for documenting the growth debates in independent India, which helps understand the concepts for the new researcher in the field and the policymakers in the developing and less developed countries. JEL Codes: D24, E24, O47

Tertiarization Like China

This article documents a rapid shift toward services (tertiarization) of the Chinese economy since 2005, as evidenced by the significant increase in both employment and value-added shares of the service sector. Notably, our analysis reveals that a variety of measures of productivity growth have been greater in the service sector than in the manufacturing sector. Firm-level measures of dynamism corroborate this ongoing tertiarization trend, which is not limited to services used as inputs to industrial production but extends also to consumer services. These findings are robust across different growth accounting methodologies, including a recently proposed method by Fan et al. (2023) that addresses challenges associated with the measurement of quality improvements in service industries.

An assessment of South African airlines’ growth in the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies: the unexplored dimension

Purpose Aerospace is a demanding technological and industrial sector. Several regulations and policies via innovative digital transformation have been integrated to impact production systems and supply chains, including safety measures. Studies demonstrated that the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies could enhance productivity growth and safety measures. The 4IR role in influencing airlines’ growth is yet to receive in-depth studies in South Africa. Thus, this study aims to investigate the role of 4IR technologies in influencing airlines’ growth in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach This research used a qualitative research method. Primary data were compiled via 56 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with major stakeholders. The study achieved saturation. A thematic method was used to analyse the collected data. Findings Findings reveal the nine major factors influencing South African airlines’ growth in the 4IR era. This includes investment in ergonomics applications and research, governance is driven by 4IR, collaboration and incorporation of 4IR concepts, partnership with drone technology and high precision and efficiency with 4IR. Others are reskilling and upskilling, investment in 4IR software, policies to promote 4IR usage in the industry and policies to reduce human interface. Originality/value Understanding the relative significance of 4IR technologies’ role in airlines’ growth can assist critical stakeholders in promoting innovative policies and regulations tailored towards digitalised aerospace. Thus, the study contributes to strategies to improve digital innovation, airline growth and safety as components of the air travel demands in South Africa.

Energy-sustainable agriculture in the European Union member states: Overall productivity growth and structural efficiency

The use of energy in agriculture is important to ensure modernization of agricultural practices and boost the productivity. However, one also needs to take the unintended outcomes of the increasing energy intensity into account. This paper looks into the productivity growth measures adjusted for the energy-related GHG emission and their application for the European Union (EU) agriculture. The Common Agricultural Policy implemented in the EU requires evidence-based policy guidelines. The country-level data for 2003–2019 are analysed by means of the data envelopment analysis. Thus, the aggregate measures of the productivity growth are established at the EU level. The results indicate that, after accounting for the energy-related GHG emission and structural inefficiency, there has been a decline in the agricultural multi-factor productivity of some 16%.

An assessment of financial mechanisms for green financial recovery and climate change mitigation: the case of China

The COVID-19 pandemic has made reaching sustainability and net-zero goals more challenging. The primary emphasis on health-related concerns constrains the pro-environmental movements' ability to advance. Particularly in developing nations, financial institutions may be critical in promoting green recovery. This research uses data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2005 to 2021 to investigate whether adaptation preparation's financial mechanism affects the impact of climate change and green economic development (a measure of productivity growth). We applied numerous robustness tests for the validation of empirical findings of the study. The results shown that increased financial mechanisms have a considerable negative impact on economic development and productivity growth. However, the severity of these impacts depends heavily on the degree of adaptive preparedness. We find that increased financial inclusion may lead to a revival in economic development for provinces with improved adaptability capabilities (banking sector). On the other hand, climate change may have long-term negative effects on economic development and productivity growth in places with a limited capacity for adaptation. Therefore, in China financial mechanisms might affect green economic development and climate change mitigation are the quality of institutions and income level. The development plan must included by the practioners for furthure policy planning about climate adaptation.

Measuring environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture across the EU countries based on Solow residual-based MFP

Scientific publications on environmentally sustainable or green growth in agriculture are increasingly becoming more important but empirical research is scarce. In empirical studies, the most commonly accepted way to assess environmentally sustainable or green growth in agriculture is based on measures of total factor productivity (TFP) or multifactor productivity (MFP) growth. Both measures are important for analytical and monitoring tools that can help to better understand the factors affecting output growth as well as the determinants of changes in production factors (labour and produced capital) in agriculture. Growth of TFP or MFP is achieved through the application of technologies and advanced production practices that result in higher output from the same amount, or lower inputs (labour and produced capital).Conventional TFP and MFP are not suitable for the assessment of environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture because both indicators do not include environmental variables such as environmental pollution and natural capital. There is a lack of comparative empirical studies between EU countries. This study focuses on the problem of measuring environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture. The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, to develop a framework for the assessment of environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture, based on information collected in public databases; and secondly, to empirically analyse environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture in EU countries over the long period. The environmentally adjusted multifactor productivity (EAMFP) growth measure was applied to assess environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture of the EU’s countries. For analysis, the environmental pollution of agricultural production was expressed as net GHG emissions, and natural capital was expressed as the quality-adjusted agricultural land area.The research was conducted using literature overview, decomposition technique and cluster analysis method. The 28 EU countries (including the United Kingdom, which was a member of the EU until January 1, 2020) were included in the empirical analysis. The analysis covered the period between 2005 and 2019 and a five-year average annual change rates (2005-2009 and 2015-2019 respectively) were used to compare the environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture between the beginning and the end of the considered period, as is common in most agricultural growth studies.The findings show that pollution-adjusted GDP growth in agriculture was achieved in less than a five of the EU countries at the beginning of the considered period, and in most of the EU countries at the end of the considered period. In most of the EU countries, the environmentally sustainable growth in agriculture was mainly determined by technological progress, while the slow change in environmental pollution (net GHG emissions) did not have a significant contribution to agricultural growth in all EU countries. Following the hierarchical clustering method, three significantly different clusters of the EU countries were identified in terms of gross added value growth and technological progress in agriculture of EU countries in the context of environmentally sustainable growth.

Incentive regulation, productivity growth and environmental effects: the case of electricity networks in Great Britain

We analyse the productivity growth of electricity transmission and distribution networks in Great Britain and how changes in incentive mechanism have influenced the measured total factor productivity. In doing so we are also concerned to examine the effects of quality of service and environmental targets on measured productivity growth. It is increasingly important that productivity measures adjust for the increasing regulatory pressure to reduce the wider societal impacts of the electricity sector and improve quality of service. Failure to do so, may mean that productivity growth may look slower than it actually is. We employ a Data envelopment analysis technique which considers the underlying data without a stochastic element. Our findings show that productivity growth is consistently low for the period we examine, in the region of 1% p.a. over the 29 years from 1990/1991–2018/2019. For both electricity transmission and electricity distribution we try to monetise a wider range of quality and emissions variables in order to show the difference their inclusion makes to measured productivity growth. We show that it can make a difference both positively and negatively, though often this difference is small (e.g. 0.1% p.a.). However, the impact can be much larger (c. 1% p.a.), especially with respect to improvements in quality of service in the distribution network. In the context of generally slow productivity growth, we therefore show the importance of appropriate measurement.

The empirics of granular origins: some challenges and solutions with an application to the UK

We study the effects of firm-level microeconomic fluctuations on aggregate productivity in the United Kingdom. We show that a standard measure of residual productivity growth of the largest UK firms (the ‘granular residual’) produces results that are partly counter-intuitive and statistically insignificant. To combat this, we propose a refinement to the widely used control function approach to estimating technology shocks in a production function, which is aimed at accounting for firm-level heterogeneity and the potential existence of common shocks. Using this approach, we find that idiosyncratic firm-level shocks matter for the UK; the ‘granular residual’ can explain around 30% of aggregate UK productivity dynamics. We also show that simplifications of our approach, which do not control for firm-level heterogeneity and the existence of common shocks, do not perform well empirically, highlighting the importance of identifying firm-specific shocks correctly in order to properly test the ‘granularity hypothesis’.

Robust productivity growth and efficiency measurement with undesirable outputs: evidence from the oil industry.

This paper aims to contribute to the contemporary and imperative research on the performance and productivity growth of the oil industry. Among cutting edge methods, frontier analysis is a successful approach that has been widely used to assess the efficiency and productivity of entities with multiple resources and multiple outputs. This study first develops a unique framework based upon data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure efficiency and productivity in the way that it tackles the uncertainty in data and undesirable outputs and, in turn, provides useful information to decision-makers. An adaptive robust optimisation is utilised to combat uncertain data whose distributions are unknown and consider the nexus between the level of conservatism and decision-makers’ risk preference. The key advantage of the proposed robust DEA approach is that the results remain relatively unchanged when uncertain conditions exist in the problem. An empirical study on the oil refinery is presented in situations of data uncertainty along with considering CO2 emissions as the undesirable output to conduct environmental efficiency and productivity analysis of the 25 countries over the period 2000–2018. The empirical results obtained from the proposed approach give some imperative implications. First, results show that the price of robustness does not affect identically for varying technologies when assessing productivity in a global oil market, and the USA oil industry is observed as the highest productivity growth in all cases confirming its efforts for the rapid rise in oil extraction and production at low costs. There may be practical lessons for other nations to learn from the USA oil industry to improve productivity. Findings also support a considerable regress during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis in the oil industry compared to the rest of the periods in question, and due to monetary and fiscal stimulus, there is a sharp productivity growth from 2009 to 2011. The other implication that can be drawn is that the GDP growth rate and technology innovation can more effectively improve the productivity of the oil industry across the globe.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00291-022-00683-y.

The Economics of Agricultural Productivity in South Africa

Accurate measures of productivity growth are an important policy tool but are difficult to obtain in South African circumstances. In this article, we review work on the measurement of farm-level productivity in South Africa since the earliest attempts at multifactor indices in the early 1990s. The focus is on total factor productivity, but single input measures such as labor and land productivity (yields) are also discussed. Measurements using time-series and cross-sectional data are discussed separately, along with measures to explain the effect of climate change. Data deficiencies are also pointed out. The article concludes that international collaboration should be maintained if important issues such as the COVID-19 impact, food security, climate change, and labor market shocks are to be successfully addressed.

A Satellite Account for Health in the United States.

This paper develops a satellite account for the US health sector and measures productivity growth in health care for the elderly population between 1999 and 2012. We measure the change in medical spending and health outcomes for a comprehensive set of 80 conditions. Medical care has positive productivity growth over the time period, with aggregate productivity growth of 1.5% per year. However, there is significant heterogeneity in productivity growth. Care for cardiovascular disease has had very high productivity growth. In contrast, care for people with musculoskeletal conditions has been costly but has not led to improved outcomes.

Chasing an Elusive Target: Measuring Productivity Growth under Factor-Biased Technical Change

Chasing an Elusive Target: Measuring Productivity Growth under Factor-Biased Technical Change

Multiple Directions for Measuring Biased Technical Change

Malmquist and Hicks−Moorsteen productivity indexes are the two most widely used indexes for measuring productivity growth. The former, which has been proposed initially, has a nice feature of decomposing productivity growth into two important sources: efficiency change and technical change components. The technical change component is considered measuring the distances between the isoquants along a single direction. When technical change is not Hicks-neutral and is biased towards certain factor inputs or outputs, the distance between the isoquants is dependent on the direction selected. In this case, if we adopt a single direction for measuring the distances, we can only locally capture technical change, which is a global phenomenon by nature. To rectify this problem, we propose a more global index of technical change that measures the distance between the isoquants by utilizing two directions. Along with the existing measure of efficiency change, this allows us to define a corresponding productivity index. This index turns out to be the geometric mean of the Malmquist and the Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indexes under constant returns to scale technology. While there has been a long discussion on which index is more preferable between the two productivity indexes, we give a justification to using the geometric mean of these two indexes.

Productivity Growth and Local Content Requirement of the Manufacturing Industry in Banten Province

Productivity growth needs to be optimized not only to produce quality products, increase exports, and reduce dependence on imports but also to support the performance of the manufacturing sector. This study aims to determine the manufacturing industry map in Banten Province, measure manufacturing industry productivity growth, and analyze the effect of Local Content Requirement (LCR) on manufacturing industry productivity growth from 2005 to 2017 by employing the use of K-Means cluster and panel data regression analysis. For this purpose, Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is the indicator used to measure productivity growth. The LCR is known as the percentage of local raw and auxiliary materials used in the production process. According to K-Means cluster analysis results, industrial companies are grouped into three clusters with different characteristics. The result of panel data regression analysis shows that the TFP of all manufacturing industry sub-sectors has increased and was influenced by LCR, total production, domestic investment, import, and provincial minimum wage. As a result, the government should integrate the LCR and other policies, such as the Indonesian National Standard, to increase productivity growth.

Intangibles, markups, and the measurement of productivity growth

In recent years, measured TFP growth in the US has declined. We argue that two forces contributed to this decline: the mismeasurement of intangible capital, and rising markups. Markups affect input shares, while intangibles omitted from measures of investment affect measured capital growth, each potentially generating downward bias in measured TFP growth. Most importantly, when both forces are simultaneously present, their effects reinforce each other and amplify the downward bias in measured TFP growth. Using input-output data, we estimate that this mechanism could account for one-third to two-thirds of the decline in measured TFP growth.

TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN CHINA’S CORN FARMING: AN APPLICATION OF GENERALIZED PRODUCTIVITY INDICATOR

Total factor productivity (TFP) growth measures usually focus on a certain direction of optimization and ignore the general setting encompassing the input and output orientations simultaneously. This paper uses the generalized Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen (LHM) TFP indicator which is additively complete and can be decomposed by three mutually exclusive elements. The input- and output-oriented analysis is undertaken in order to derive the generalized TFP measured. The paper uses the corn production data from 19 Chinese provinces over the period of 2004–2017. This research is important as China is the second largest corn producer in the world. The TFP growth was observed for Chinese corn farming the rate of 0.56% per year. The technological progress (0.48%) was the major source of the TFP growth, whereas the importance of the technical efficiency change (0.09%) and scale efficiency change (–0.01%) was negligible.

Sustainable Green Growth in Developing Economies

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiated by Chinese government could be regarded as a systematic framework for promoting economic cooperation and development among the countries along the Belt and Road and China. This paper attempts to analyze economic and environmental performance in 61 developing countries along Belt and Road. An additive total factor productivity growth measure allows aggregating contributions of individual countries along the BRI to construct a reasonable measure. Both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered. The growth in the total factor productivity is decomposed with respect to the economic and environmental contributions. The annual average growth rate of green productivity is 3.1% and the disparity of economic and environmental performance could be observed among countries. Some countries show robust economic growths while environmental performance slows down green growth. This indicates that developing economies should pay attention to environmental impacts and promote sustainable development by sharing emission reduction technologies.