Search results for " Productivity"
showing 10 items of 252 documents
Production risk, risk aversion and the determination of risk attitudes among Spanish rice producers
2011
Agricultural production is subject to risk and the attitudes of producers toward risk will influence input choices insofar as these affect production risk. Risk attitudes in turn may be affected by certain socioeconomic characteristics of producers. Using 2004 survey data from a cross-section of 130 Spanish rice farms, we estimate risk-aversion coefficients of farmers and investigate the influence of a series of socioeconomic variables on their risk attitudes. Our results show that farmers exhibit risk-averse behavior and that risk attitudes are related to a series of socioeconomic characteristics. In particular, the belief that the farm will continue after the producer retires is found to …
Does Firm Size Affect Self-selection and Learning-by-Exporting?
2010
The trade literature has long discussed the existence of some benefits attributed to exporting, among others, the improvement of firm productivity. This paper examines whether firm size plays a role in this supposedly favourable relationship between exporting and total factor productivity (TFP). To examine this, we investigate, separately for large and small firms, whether firms starting to export perform better ex ante (self-selection) than non-exporting firms and, conditional on this fact, if they are also more productive ex post (learning-by-exporting). With this purpose, we use both stochastic dominance and matching techniques. The dataset is a representative sample of Spanish manufactu…
Renewable electricity producing technologies and metal depletion: A sensitivity analysis using the EROI
2015
International audience; More and more attention is being paid to renewable technologies because they are seen as a great opportunity to disengage our society from its dependence on fossil fuels. Such flow-based energy resources that rely on solarenergy are supposed to lead us toward a sustainable energy future. However, because of their high capitalintensity, renewable technologies require large amounts of matter, including both common and rare metals.These metals require energy for their production, and more specifically for their extraction. The energy costassociated with metal extraction is linked to mineral ore grade, meaning that as depletion progresses, energycost increases. In additi…
Heterogeneous effects of sustainable agriculture practices: micro-evidence from Malawi
2020
Abstract Are the effects of sustainable agricultural practices heterogeneous across agro-ecology and wealth in Malawi? Would a wealth-enhancing policy be associated with increased effectiveness of these practices? Focusing on a nationally representative set of Malawian agricultural households, the article answers the above questions by employing plot-level panel data matched with a set of geo-referenced rainfall and temperature records. The findings suggest a positive correlation between aggregate yield and the adoption of organic fertilizer. A similar result holds for legume intercropping and for hybrid seeds, which are associated to reductions in yield volatility between the two waves. Ne…
Unbundling Technology Adoption andtfpat the Firm Level: Do Intangibles Matter?
2015
We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We distinguish between total factor productivity (tfp) and technology adoption, whereas standard estimations consider only a notion of productivity that conflates the two effects. Although we are unable to address simultaneity, we allow for the existence of multiple technologies within sectors through a mixture model approach. We find that intangible assets have nonnegligible effects that both push firms toward better technologies (technology adoption effects) and allow for more efficient exploitation of a given technology (tfp effects).
Educational intentions, cognitive skills and earnings expectations of French undergraduates
2014
International audience; This article aims to study the earnings expectations of first-year students at a French university. Our findings highlight the importance of the environment in which students make their choices about education. Expected earnings are proportionally higher when their parents seem to be involved in the careers guidance, taking into account the effect of parental socio-economic status. The positive opinion of parents about the orientation or the connection between the discipline and the father's occupation are generally associated with higher earnings. In addition, our results show a strong impact of cognitive variables which are far more significant than variables relat…
Technological and organizational capital : Where complementarities exist
2018
This study analyzes the complementarities between technological and organizational capital within enterprises. Different components of technological and organizational capital exert distinct—and often opposed—forces on each other. Our empirical results show that greater employee voice promotes firm productivity when combined with information technology, but harms firm productivity when combined with communication technology. On the other hand, flexible work design is positively associated with communication technology and negatively associated with information technology. peerReviewed
The impact of the Great Recession on TFP convergence among EU countries
2017
ABSTRACTThis article provides evidence on the effect of the Great Recession on productivity convergence among European Union (EU) economies. We use firm data, aggregated at the country-year level, to analyse the evolution of beta-convergence on total factor productivity (TFP) for 2003–2014. We obtain a positive impact of the recession on TFP (unconditional and conditional) beta-convergence across EU economies. These results support the existence of a catching-up process within the EU during the recent financial crisis. Other macroeconomic and institutional characteristics are important in fostering TFP growth, namely R&D intensity and quality of governance.
More skilled, better paid : labour-market returns to postsecondary vocational education
2017
Outside the USA, relatively little is known about the labour-market returns to postsecondary vocational (or polytechnic) education. Yet, polytechnics in Europe are distinct from US community colleges. This paper focuses on the labour-market returns to polytechnic attendance in Finland, where polytechnics are representative of many European countries. Using matching methods and longitudinal administrative data, we find that, compared to individuals with no postsecondary education, students who attend polytechnics have higher annual earnings of €3,300 to €3,700 and employment gains of 2.5 to 6.6 percentage points 10 years after the entry decision. However, the returns vary by personal charact…
Aggregate uncertainty and sectoral productivity growth: The role of credit constraints
2016
Abstract We show that an increase in aggregate uncertainty—measured by stock market volatility—reduces productivity growth more in industries that depend heavily on external finance. The mechanism at play is that during periods of high uncertainty, firms that are credit constrained switch the composition of investment by reducing productivity-enhancing investment—such as on ICT capital—which is more subject to liquidity risks (Aghion et al., 2010). The effect is larger during recessions, when financing constraints are more likely to be binding, than during expansions. Our statistical method—a difference-in-difference approach using productivity growth of 25 industries from 18 advanced econo…