Search results for "PRODUCTIVITY"
showing 10 items of 618 documents
New evidence on international R&D spillovers, human capital and productivity in the OECD
2002
Abstract In this article we show how the use of more reliable data on average years of schooling can change the conclusions about the magnitude of international R&D spillovers based on previous evidence, while pointing to a superior role of human capital.
The Economic Rationale of Fiscal Rules in OCAs: The Stability and Growth Pact and the Excessive Deficit Procedure
2013
This chapter examines the case of different regions within a single country that wish to share a common currency, even though they have divergent trends in unemployment, inflation, wages, non-wage costs and productivity. This situation compares with the case of a group of EU countries, each with its own decentralised national budget, that have established a monetary union and that are facing asymmetric shocks. As such an economic context requires fiscal commitments from national governments, we analyse the economic rationale of setting fiscal rules for a common currency area and the resulting EU institutional frame for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and the Excessive Deficit Procedure …
Do market regulations reduce investment? Evidence from European regions
2016
ABSTRACTDo market regulations reduce investment? Evidence from European regions. Regional Studies. This paper investigates the impact of market imperfections on non-farm business sector investment in European regions for 1995–2007, using dynamic panel and generalized method of moments (GMM) methods for estimating a Euler equation. The results show that barriers to entrepreneurship and to trade and investment decrease the productivity of capital, which has negative effects on European regions’ investment. Corruption leads to increased operational costs, creates uncertainty and thereby deters investment. Greater labour market regulation also means higher labour costs. Hiring and firing regula…
Productivity, Ownership & National Chains: Evidence from the British Retail Sector
2008
This paper investigates whether foreign-owned retailers operating in the British retail sector perform differently than domestic-owned firms with diverse national presence. Using simultaneous quantile regression techniques we test for any sign of performance gaps. The findings suggest that foreign ownership turns out to be a weak explanatory factor of differences in performance across retailers. Only when firms in the upper quantiles of TFP are compared, the role of foreign ownership gains statistical significance, although with exceptions. On the other hand, firms able to expand their infrastructure across Great Britain possess a productivity advantage over more local retailers. This impli…
Product and process innovation and total factor productivity: Evidence for manufacturing in four Latin American countries
2017
The literature on firm productivity recognizes the important role played by firm innovation activities on firm productivity in developed countries. However, the literature for developing and emerging economies is scarce and far from conclusive. The aim of this paper is to study the innovation–productivity link (distinguishing between process and product innovations) for manufacturing at the firm level for four Latin American countries (two classified as upper-middle income countries by the World Bank—Argentina and Mexico—and two as lower-middle income—Colombia and Peru). We aim testing whether the level of development is a mediating factor in the innovation–productivity link. The data used …
The financial impact of Spanish pension reform: A quick estimate
2012
In this paper, we present a preliminary estimate of the financial impact of the recent reform of the Spanish pension system. After updating the projections of pension expenditure constructed in de la Fuente and Doménech (2010) for the period 2008-2060, we analyze the impact on this variable of raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 years, extending from 15 to 25 years the period over which wages are averaged to calculate the starting pension and increasing from 35 to 37 the number of contribution years required to obtain a 'full pension.' Conditional on a series of assumptions about the evolution of employment, productivity and demographics, our estimates suggest that these measures will …
Public capital and productive efficiency in the Spanish regions (1964–89)
1995
The article analyses the evolution of the differences in economic conditions among Spanish regions from the perspective provided by the recent advances made in economic growth empirics. Although convergence is usually established in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita, in the case of Spain it is of special interest to break it down into three separate elements: activity rate, employment rate, and productivity of labour. Regional differences in unemployment rates, which persist for long periods of time, are identified as a force against convergence. After describing the distinction between conditional and non conditional convergence, the paper considers the role played by the product…
Public capital, productive efficiency and convergence in the Spanish regions (1964-93)
1998
This paper analyses the behaviour of productive efficiency in the Spanish regions for the period 1964–93. From a growth accounting approach, it describes the regional evolution of total factor productivity (TFP'), based on a private inputs production function. A stricter measure of efficiency is then quantified, which is not equivalent to Solow's residual, since public capital is included in the production function and constant returns to scale are not imposed. Finally, on the basis of the measures of total factor productivity and efficiency, the study discusses the existence of technological convergence among Spanish regions and the role played in it by public capital. The renewed interest…
Technology spillover and TFP growth: A spatial Durbin model
2016
Beginning with a model in which technological progress is reflected by product variety, we provide a structural approach to estimate technology spillovers allowing for spatial interdependencies. To this end, we first present a theoretical model of TFP growth by decomposing TFP into quality and variety components. We address the quality component by introducing a country׳s distance to the technological frontier. Quality is assumed to be a negative function of the technological gap of country i with respect to its own technological frontier. This technological threshold is defined as the geometric means of knowledge levels in all countries. We deal with the variety component by using R&D expe…
Effects of Vildagliptin/Metformin Therapy on Patient-Reported Outcomes: Work Productivity, Patient Satisfaction, and Resource Utilization
2013
Introduction: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is associated not only with high direct healthcare costs, but also with indirect costs, as diabetic complications and the disease itself result in loss of productivity. Vildagliptin is a novel dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor that is given either alone or in combination with oral hypoglycemic drugs, including metformin. The study was designed to assess the hypothesis that fixed-combination vildagliptin/metformin improves work productivity measured as Work Productivity and Activity Impairment (WPAI) scores. Secondary objectives were the assessment of patient satisfaction by means of the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire (DTSQs), the c…