Search results for "Marginal product"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
An empirical test of marginal productivity theory
2014
We explore an hitherto unused approach to testing marginal productivity theory. Our method rests on the simple idea that, under the assumption of a linear homogeneous production function, residual profits are informative about the discrepancies between factor payments and marginal products. Our empirical application using data on manufacturing plants in Chile suggest moderate deviations from marginal productivity theory which depend on firm size.
On John Bates Clark's “Naive Productivity Ethics”: A Note
2023
Abstract This article explores in detail the reactions among American economists to John Bates Clark's famously controversial claim that the marginal productivity theory of factor pricing and distribution is necessarily just. The general debate around Clark's “naïve productivity ethics,” as George Stigler sharply called it, transcended the then existing distinctions within the discipline and involved figures of virtually all theoretical and ideological persuasions—from prolabor progressives such as Richard T. Ely to staunch conservatives such as Thomas Nixon Carver. Our reconstruction reveals that, contrary to several standard historical accounts, for American early twentieth-century margin…
Structural Source of the Trap of ICT Advancement - Lessons from World ICT Top Leaders
2014
In light of the significant consequence of the trap of dramatic advancement of information and communication technology (ICT) in the global economy, both nations and firms that have been compelling their productivity decline. This resulted in great stagnation of ICT advanced economies and therefore its structural sources were analyzed. Based on an empirical analysis tracing, the trend in marginal productivity of ICT and its subsequent prices among the top ICT leaders in the world over the last two decades correlating with the effects of ICT, two faces of ICT advancement were identified. On one side, advancement of ICT contributes to its prices increase by new functionality development, its …
When is there more employment, with individual or collective wage bargaining?
2019
Abstract In a standard Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides labour market with frictions, the authors seek to determine when there is more employment with individual wage bargaining than with collective wage bargaining, using a wage equation generated by the standard total surplus sharing rule. Using a Cobb-Douglas production function, they find that if the bargaining power of the individual is high compared to the bargaining power of the union, there is more unemployment with individual wage setting and vice versa. When the individual worker and the union have the same bargaining power, if the cost of opening a vacancy is sufficiently high, there is more unemployment with individual wage setting. …
John M. Clark and frank H. Knight on the adding-up theorem, overhead costs, and more
2018
This note offers new archival insight into a 1925 polemical exchange between Frank Knight and John Maurice Clark that was hosted in the pages of Journal of Political Economy. Although the exchange centered on the effects of overhead costs on marginal productivity theory and the so-called adding-up theorem, it also provided significant elements to assess the methodological differences between two of the most representative American economists of the interwar years.
Skill Biased Technical Change and Misallocation: A Unified Framework
2019
Due to strict reliance on competitive labor markets, standard approaches which measure skill biased technical change (SBTC) conflate labor market distortions which prevent firms from choosing the efficient ratio between skilled and unskilled labor and `true' SBTC. This contrasts with recent evidence on decoupling between wages and productivity. To overcome this limitation, we present a unified framework to estimate SBTC which accounts for factor accumulation (FA) effects, and quantifies the discrepancy (i.e., relative misallocation) between the wage ratio (skilled to unskilled) and the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS). The suggested methodology takes advantage of recent develo…
Existence of competitive equilibrium in a non-optimal one-sector economy without conditions on the distorted marginal product of capital
2012
Abstract This paper develops a method for proving the existence of competitive equilibrium in a distorted/non-optimal one-sector economy–a discrete time variant of the Romer model–without conditions on the equilibrium value of the marginal product of capital. Existence is obtained under weaker conditions than in Le Van et al. (2002) . Moreover, we provide an existence result for an economy with a regressive tax studied in Santos (2002) . The proofs rely on ideas of Becker and Boyd (1997) .
Neo Open Innovation in the Digital Economy : Harnessing Soft Innovation Resources
2018
Successive increases in R&D that creates new functionality are essential for global competitiveness. However, unexpectedly, as a consequence of the two-faced nature of information and communication technology (ICT), excessive R&D results in a marginal productivity decline leading to a decrease in digital value creation. In order to overcome such a dilemma, global ICT firms have been endeavoring to transform themselves into disruptive business model. Neo open innovation that harnesses soft innovation resources may be a solution to this critical question. On the basis of an empirical analysis focusing on forefront endeavors to this dilemma by global ICT firms, this paper attempted to demonstr…
Les limites de la théorie du salaire d'efficience
1998
Efficiency wage theory, evolved by the "new keynesians", is part of a research programme concerned with explaining "involuntary" unemployment as part of the "general equilibrium". So, these works are a synthesis attempt of neo-classical and keynesian analyses in the employment area. Indeed, the authors place their analysis in a walrasian framework, but they integrate a keynesian concept to complete their models. In order to achieve their purpose, the efficiency wage theorists formulate two propositions on which their argument is based: 1° the relation supposed rising between the rate of wage and the productivity of wage earners, 2° the determination of the rate of wage outside the market. W…