Productivity-enhancing Technology Research Articles

AI, Demand and the Impact of Productivity-enhancing Technology on Jobs: Evidence from Portugal

ABSTRACT This study examines whether AI, as revealed in productivity improvements, may have the ability to threaten sectoral employment in Portugal. We first present a theoretical framework based on a supply and demand model for sectoral output. This model predicts that the impact of AI will depend on the response of labor demand to two opposing forces: as productivity improves less labor is required to produce the same output, while more output is demanded because of lower production costs brought about by higher productivity, which creates more jobs. Our estimates of the industry-level elasticities of employment with respect to productivity for a sample of 32 industries over 1995–2017 using a Bayesian multilevel approach are all negative and surprisingly similar across sectors.

Exploring the Status, Prospects and Constraints of Riverbed Cultivation in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, India

Riverbed farming is a sustainable, productivity-enhancing technology suitable for dissemination in other appropriate areas. It has been shown to be economically viable, environmentally sustainable, socially acceptable and technologically appropriate for landless and land-poor farmers in the Terai region. The study was conducted on five villages from three riverbed systems with 20 respondents from each village thereby totaling number of 100 respondents. The data were collected on information about riverbed cultivation, marketing of riverbed products, prospects of riverbed cultivation and constraints of riverbed cultivation. The results shows that 100% respondents give first rank to proper utilization of riverbed land for adopting riverbed cultivation and 100% accept that they have used income from riverbed cultivation to setup other occupations. It was also shown that most of the farmers sell their produce through middlemen from the farm that was 75% in Singimari river bed system followed by 65% in Torsha and 60% in Shiltorsha respectively and transportation was the most important constraint having mean value 2.83

Effects of technology dissemination approaches on agricultural technology uptake and utilization in Northern Ghana

Agricultural productivity growth is considered a key pathway to resolving poverty and food insecurity issues in developing Africa. One such pathway to improving agricultural productivity depends on technology uptake and utilization. A critical binding constraint to technology uptake and utilization is the mode of disseminating improved agricultural technologies. The selected methods of disseminating agricultural technologies to farmers are known to influence the replicative effect on productivity enhancement among target and non-target farmers. Based on activities conducted by the Agriculture Technology Transfer Project in Northern Ghana between 2017 and 2018, this paper assesses how multiple dissemination methods influenced technology uptake and utilization by farmers. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to collect data from 1009 farmers from the (former) three northern regions, and count data and binary regression methods were further applied to assess the effects of the various dissemination approaches on technology uptake and utilization. Results indicate that a well-designed combination of technology dissemination approaches would be most effective and has adoption potential in Northern Ghana. Lessons from this activity may also be effective in promoting productivity-enhancing technology uptake in similar agricultural communities elsewhere.

Linking investment decisions and future food security to the regulation of genetic-based technologies

The paper makes explicit the link between regulation of genetic-based technologies and long run food security through the effect on investment decisions related to these technologies using a real options model. Of all the drivers of social change, alterations in food security status are one of the most disruptive to societies. Improvements can release individuals and groups from chronic hunger, malnourishment, anxieties stemming from continually having to search for the next meal and obtaining food being a full time occupation. Deterioration can lead to declining productivity, mass migrations, famine and death – all of which can spark social change. Forecasting changes in food security is, hence, important for policy makers. Improving food security requires increases in agricultural productivity. New plant breeding technologies based on genomics do not rely on controversial transgenic technology. It is important to understand the link between regulatory policy and firm's decisions to invest in the development of new crop varieties. By making the link between regulation and investment explicit suggests that the regulatory regime chosen for technological advance in genomics and associated enabling techniques should be considered carefully in the context of the need for investments in productivity enhancing technology and for forecasting food security challenges.

Sustainability of SMEs in the Competition: A Systemic Review on Technological Challenges and SME Performance

In the era of economic globalization, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are recognized as an engine of sustainable economic development in both the developed and developing world. In literature, three competitive challenges—the sustainability challenge, the global challenge and the technological challenge—faced by industrial entities in the current globalized economy, are categorized. Of them, this paper undertakes a systemic review of the literature covering the theme of SMEs and technology in order to identify how technological progress in the SMEs, correlates with SMEs survival improvement in the global competition. The review identified six driving forces—social capital, link with Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) and Transnational Corporations (TNCs), innovation, sharing and networking, information technology, and adoption of productivity-enhancing technology—influencing technological upgrade in the SMEs. The review also identified two conditions for successful technological adaptation in the SME sector—availability of technologically skillful workforce in the economy, and identification of opportunities of new technologies in the competition. These conditions could be viewed in the macro environment and emphasize the need for the economies’ readiness towards SMEs’ success.

Automation and jobs: when technology boosts employment*

SUMMARY Will new technologies cause industries to shed jobs, requiring novel policies to address mass unemployment? Sometimes productivity-enhancing technology increases industry employment instead. In manufacturing, jobs grew along with productivity for a century or more; only later did productivity gains bring declining employment. What changed? The elasticity of demand. Using data over two centuries for US textile, steel and auto industries, this paper shows that automation initially spurred job growth because demand was highly elastic. But demand later became satiated, leading to job losses. A simple model explains why this pattern might be common, suggesting that today’s technologies may cause some industries to decline and others to grow. Automation might not cause mass unemployment, but it may well require workers to make disruptive transitions to new industries, requiring new skills and occupations.

Dynamic impacts of farm-level technology adoption on the Brazilian dairy supply chain

Agricultural technology adoption that increases individual firm productivity is generally assumed to improve competitiveness and profitability. However, technology that is adopted by many firms in an industry can shift the basic supply relationship, increasing total production while lowering farm prices. While generally beneficial to consumers, this result can reduce (or completely offset) benefits for farmers, especially late or non-adopters. Our objective is to assess the market dynamics of alternative assumptions about exogenous productivity-enhancing technology adoption by Brazilian dairy farms. Of particular interest is the distributional impact on farm incomes and on the proportion of milk production for different farm size classes. To achieve this objective, we developed an empirical System Dynamics model that evaluates market and farm profitability impacts from 2006 to 2016. We simulated six counterfactual scenarios comprising three rates of adoption (slow, medium and fast) by two farm size categories (small and large). Technology adoption impact differs in the short- and long-term and depending on the assumed rates and farm sizes. Non-adopters of technology can experience lower incomes and a smaller production and income shares when other farms adopt. The underlying causal structure of farm profitability and the herd management decisions suffices to explain the potential market exclusion of non-adopting farms (especially small-scale farms) when others adopt.

Moving past transgenics – the potential for genomics to open markets in the EU for African agricultural products

ABSTRACTIn 1999 the European Union imposed a moratorium on imports of agricultural products produced using biotechnology based on transgenics. In 2003 the moratorium was replaced by a strict, costly and politicised regime for regulatory approval which is impossible for African exporters to satisfy. Further, co-mingling of unapproved GMOs with conventional crops has meant refusal of shipments. The EU NTBs have also inhibited a productivity enhancing technology as African countries feared loss of markets given their inability to segregate GMOs. Further, absence of GMO use has meant little investment in GMO-based tropical crops. Biological science is not static and the declining cost of genomic information combined with low cost gene editing technologies means that gains in productivity can be obtained without transgenics. Genomics uses improved information on the genetic make-up of a plant to enhance its performance using its existing genetic material. Thus, the speculative risks associated with transgenics should not arise for genomics. The falling cost of genomic information and implementing technologies, may create opportunities for African-based developers of genomic-based crops. This paper explores the potential of a relatively open regulatory regime for genomic-based crops from Africa entering the EU including the potential for African adoption and plant breeding.

Contractual status, worker well-being and economic development

This article focuses on the growth of non-standard employment arrangements in those segments of the labour market in developing countries that were previously the locus of ‘standard’ jobs. While informality is still a significant concern in developing countries, the increase in non-standard employment has compounded problems for workers and the labour market, adding to the already heightened levels of insecurity. In addition, by weakening the employment relationship, enterprises have less of an incentive to invest in the training of their workers or in productivity-enhancing technology or organizational improvements, potentially undermining economic development. Never the less, these issues can be addressed through regulations that lessen differences in contractual arrangements, as well as by restricting the use of non-standard employment. Governments should consider instituting and enforcing these measures for the benefit of workers, but also for firms, and for economic development in general.

Automation and Jobs: When Technology Boosts Employment

Will new technologies cause industries to shed jobs, requiring novel policies to address mass unemployment? Sometimes productivity-enhancing technology increases industry employment instead. In manufacturing, jobs grew along with productivity for a century or more; only later did productivity gains bring declining employment. What changed? The elasticity of demand. Using data over two centuries for US textile, steel, and auto industries, this paper shows that automation initially spurred job growth because demand was highly elastic. But demand later became satiated, leading to job losses. A simple model explains why this pattern might be common, suggesting that today’s technologies may cause some industries to decline and others to grow. Automation might not cause mass unemployment, but it may well require workers to make disruptive transitions to new industries, requiring new skills and occupations.

Inside the black box of services: evidence from India

In general, economists have treated the services sector as a black box. India, where the sector now dominates economic activity, is no exception. The object of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of the services sector with reference to different economic characteristics. Analysing data from India, we find that it is a set of highly heterogeneous economic activities with respect to productivity-enhancing technology characteristics, barriers to entry for employment, factor use, linkages with other sectors and tradability in international markets. This is indicative of subsector-specific implications for economic growth, balance of payments, employment, the sustainability of services-led growth, poverty, inequality and the different explanations for the growing share of the services sector in total output. Importantly, these implications, which lend perspective to the findings of a growing literature on the subject, provide a stepping stone for advancing significant research questions, both in the context of India and elsewhere. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Political Legitimacy and Technology Adoption

A fundamental question of economic and technological history is why some civilizations adopted new and important technologies and others did not. In this paper, we construct a simple political-economy model that suggests that rulers may not accept a productivity-enhancing technology when it negatively affects an agent's ability to provide the ruler legitimacy. However, when other sources of legitimacy emerge, the ruler will accept the technology as long as the new legitimizing source is not negatively affected. This insight helps explain the initial blocking but eventual accepting of the printing press in the Ottoman Empire and industrialization in tsarist Russia.

The Analysis Of The Rural Credit Market In Ghana

The formal banking sector does not satisfy the growing demand for credit, and many borrowers turn to informal loan sources to meet their production and consumption needs. The problem of the rural credit, which includes supplying credit for a rural community for economic growth, is reemerging on the development agenda as a pressing issue. The rural economy is financially very fragile. Lack of credit is a significant and sometimes binding constraint, limiting investment in productivity-enhancing technology and inputs. Rural credit plays a critical role in household strategies to reduce vulnerability. In spite of the contribution that credit entails to the rural development, it has been one of the crucial factors that have not been given proper attention. The purpose of this paper is to identify problems that have hindered the effectiveness of the rural credit market in Ghana. The paper is premised on the theoretical understanding of rural credit markets and applies the framework to investigate the aspect of the rural credit market in Ghana. Improving the rural credit system will help to raise household incomes and reduce poverty and will contribute to the eradication of extreme poverty. The paper identifies high cost, interest rate, lack of collateral, lack of innovation and high delinquency rates as the main factors that have hindered the effectiveness of the rural credit market in Ghana. This paper will interest policymakers to place more emphasis on savings mobilization and to revisit interest rate policy, while providing cheap and adequate credit to small and poor farmers.

Does China Transfer Productivity Enhancing Technology to Sub‐Saharan Africa? Evidence from Manufacturing Firms*

Abstract: This paper considers whether trade between China and sub‐Saharan Africa results in productivity‐enhancing technology transfers to sub‐Saharan African manufacturing firms. As trade flows between countries potentially results in interactions that lead to technological improvements in the production of goods and services, we parameterize the level of total factor productivity for African manufacturing firms as a function of foreign direct investment flow, and for the country in which it operates, trade openness with China, and its interaction with foreign direct investment. With micro‐level data on manufacturing firms in five sub‐Saharan African countries, we estimate the parameters of firm‐level production functions between 1992 and 2004. Our parameter estimates reveal that across the firms and countries in our sample, there is no relationship between productivity‐enhancing foreign direct investment and trade with China. In addition, increasing trade openness with China has no effect on the growth rate of total factor productivity. To the extent that total factor productivity and its growth is a crucial determinant of economic growth and living standards in the long run, our results suggest that increasing trade openness with China is not a long‐run source of higher living standards for sub‐Saharan Africa.

Productivity and Employment in a Developing Country: Some Evidence from Korea

Summary The vast majority of the sizable empirical literature which examines the relationship between productivity and employment examines data from developed countries. In this paper, we contribute to the limited empirical literature on the productivity–employment relationship in developing countries by applying structural vector autoregression (VAR) models on Korean data. We find that productivity-enhancing technology shocks reduce hours worked in the short run. Such evidence is qualitatively similar to findings from developed countries, and more consistent with sticky price models than the real business cycle theory. Although productivity-enhancing technology shocks are an important source of economic growth in Korea, they may have exerted a negative impact on employment.

Information Technology, Productivity and Asset Ownership: Evidence from Taxicab Fleets

This paper develops a simple model that links the adoption of a productivity-enhancing technology to increased vertical integration and a less skilled workforce. We test the model’s key prediction using novel micro data on vehicle ownership patterns from the Economic Census during a period when computerized dispatching systems were first adopted by taxicab firms. Controlling for time-invariant firm-specific effects, firms increase the proportion of taxicabs under fleet-ownership by 12 percent when they adopt new computerized dispatching systems. Using increasingly stringent econometric tests, we verify that the baseline tests are indicative of a casual relationship between dispatching technology adoption and vertical integration. These findings suggest that increasing a firm’s productivity can lead to increased vertical integration, even in the absence of asset specificity.

Information Technology, Productivity, and Asset Ownership: Evidence from Taxicab Fleets

We develop a simple model that links the adoption of a productivity-enhancing technology to increased vertical integration and a less skilled workforce. We test the model’s key prediction using novel microdata on vehicle ownership patterns from the Economic Census during a period when computerized dispatching systems were first adopted by taxicab firms. Controlling for time-invariant firm-specific effects, firms increase the proportion of taxicabs under fleet ownership by 12% when they adopt new computerized dispatching systems. An instrumental variables analysis suggests that the link between dispatching technology and vertical integration is causal. These findings suggest that increasing a firm’s productivity can lead to increased vertical integration, even in the absence of asset specificity.

Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919 (review)

Reviewed by: Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919 Nancy Mandell Margaret C. Kechnie , Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. Much of Canadian sociology focuses on urban matters, often, neglecting the rich history of rural women's activities. With her detailed account of the formation of the Federated Women's Institutes, one of the earliest rural women's groups in Ontario, Margaret Kechnie draws our attention to the life and times of farm and small-town women in the early 1900s. Using first-hand documents [End Page 379] from meetings, speeches, annual reports and government sources, Kechnie traces the beginnings of the Women's Institutes (W.I.) at a meeting in Stoney Creek in 1897 to its eventual federation in 1919. One question anchors Kechnie's analysis: How is it possible that a group to which farmers were initially so antagonistic and openly scornful could achieve, thirty years later, widespread provincial influence? Her answer is succinct: rural Ontario women "stole" the W.I. from its originators, the Department of Agriculture, and reshaped it to meet their needs. At the turn of the century, Ontario farmers faced many challenges: a crippling depression, depopulation of rural areas, and the application of industrial production methods to farming. The Ontario Department of Agriculture, in cooperation with its agent. The Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), initiated strategies to modernize farming including introducing productivity-enhancing technology, educating farmers on public health issues, and championing a domestic ideology of separate work spheres for men and women. The W.I., Kechnie shows, was an instrument created, funded and managed by the Ontario government in its attempt to professionalize farming and eradicate the "superstitious and stick-in-the-mud" ideas that the government felt characterized much of the thinking within the farm community. Rather than continuing the myth that the W.I. enjoyed widespread grassroots support from its inception, Kechnie reveals the early attempts to organize the W.I. as a failure. Using firsthand materials to support her arguments, Kechnie provides an in-depth look at the early responses to government attempts to regulate the lives of rural women. The 1898 first annual report of the Stoney Creek branch, for example, shows many members bewildered by the aims and objectives of the group while others seemed indifferent and still others overtly hostile. Initially advertised as a "social" group for farm women, the W.I. had a vague name, an overtly patriotic motto of "For Home and Country", and am ambiguous mandate of promoting better living. It had little appeal to farm women struggling daily to eke out a living. It refused to acknowledge farm women's essential income-producing activities, refused to assist them in marketing their produce, and refused to help women cope with their dual roles as homemakers and income experts. Instead, in its early years, the W.I. produced volumes of irrelevant and impractical information. Rather than addressing structural problems that hindered modernization, such as the lack of affordable hydroelectric power, immunization, contagious diseases, emergency health care, and mishaps with farm animals, the W.I. avoided topics of crucial importance to farm women. Although Kechnie does not label it as such, early, state-sponsored organizing by the W.I. represents a bold attempt at moral and social regulation. Take the example of Laura Rose, a single career woman, OAC instructor and dairy [End Page 380] expert. In 1906, in an address to an annual W.I. meeting, Rose's speech entitled "The Womanly Sphere of Woman" articulates the ideology of domesticity. Men, using the latest technology, should carry out agricultural work traditionally done by women, including dairying. The increased profits would allow men to further modernize their operations. Applying time-saving techniques to home and farm would provide women with increased energy and time to enjoy leisure pursuits that would equip them spiritually and emotionally. A healthier and more contented farm population would result if both men and women embraced new ideals and new technology. In her 1911 texbook "Farm Dairying", Rose placed the problems associated with poor dairy problems squarely on the shoulders of the farm women...

Natural Resource Management and Chronic Poverty in Sub Saharan Africa: An Overview

This paper briefly identifies some underlying premises of the 'small farmer' model that inform much rural development policy designed to address poverty. The paper then reviews recent work on processes governing the use of, and access to, natural resources. It argues that the small farmer model does not correspond to many of the processes of change that are observed in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Differentiating between two scenarios, those of 'boom' and 'stagnant' rural economies, the paper explores the relationship these may have with concepts of 'remoteness' in rural areas and traces the different dynamics of agricultural production strategies and of evolving access to land in the two scenarios. It emphasises the operation of markets in influencing competition for land, and the importance of farmers' investment in productivity-enhancing technology in building their claims to land. The paper then considers the implications of these patterns of land use and access for policy seeking to improve conditions for the chronically poor.

An alternative industrial extension model: The experience of the food manufacturing industry

The ability to reach small manufacturers with productivity enhancing technology requires implementation of alternative industrial extension strategies. We describe one such strategy being pursued in the food manufacturing industry. Given the large numbers of small manufacturers and of potential technology suppliers, the challenge is to create an effective approach that takes advantage of the market aggregation capacity of food industry trade associations. Through a food manufacturing coalition, this extension effort will identify common industry needs for technology; assess and adapt existing technology;stimulate vendors to capitalize on the technology; and rely upon market forces to encourage innovative problem solving.