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"technical change"
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Agricultural Productivity Growth and Its Determinants in South and Southeast Asian Countries
Improving agricultural productivity is a priority concern in promoting the sustainable development of agriculture in developing countries. In this study, we first apply stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to analyze the growth of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) and its three components (technical change—TC, technical efficiency change—TEC and scale change—SC) in 15 south and southeast Asian countries covering the period 2002 to 2016. Then, the determinants of agricultural TFP growth are identified using dynamic panel data models. The results reveal that the south and southeast Asian countries witnessed an overall decline in agricultural productivity during the sample period, thereby creating concerns over sustaining future agricultural growth. Technical progress was the major source of TFP growth, but its contribution has slowed in recent years. On the other hand, declining scale change and technical efficiency change resulted in the deterioration of productivity over time. Variable levels of productivity performances were observed for individual countries, mainly driven by technological progress. Overall, southeast Asia achieved a more stable and sustained agricultural growth as compared to south Asia. Among the determinants, human capital, level of urbanization, and development flow to agriculture positively influenced agricultural TFP growth, while the level of economic development and agricultural import were negatively associated with TFP growth. Policy recommendations include the suggestions that south and southeast Asian countries should increase investment in human capital, focus on technological innovation and make use of financial assistance and development flow to agriculture to increase and sustain agricultural productivity. In addition, frontier countries of the two regions (e.g., India and Indonesia) should take the lead on regional agricultural development ventures by enhancing cooperation with neighboring countries on technological innovations, and countries facing diseconomies of scale (i.e., Afghanistan and Iran) should consider the rational reallocation of agricultural inputs.
Journal Article
Skilling and deskilling: technological change in classical economic theory and its empirical evidence
This article reviews and brings together two literatures: classical political economists' views on the skilling or deskilling nature of technological change in England, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they wrote, are compared with the empirical evidence about the skill effects of technological change that emerges from studies of economic historians. In both literatures, we look at both the skill impacts of technological change and at the \"inducement mechanisms\" that are envisaged for the introduction of new technologies. Adam Smith and Karl Marx both regarded the deskilling of the labour force as the predominant form of biased technical change, but other authors such as Charles Babbage also took account of capital-skill complementarities and skill-enhancing effects of technological change. For Smith, the deskilling bias was an unintended by-product of the increasing division of labour, which in his view \"naturally\" led to ever more simplification of workers' tasks. As opposed to Smith, Marx considered unskilled-biased technical change as a bourgeois weapon in the class struggle for impairing the workers' bargaining position. Studies of economic historians lend support to Marx's hypothesis about the inducement mechanisms for the introduction of unskilled-biased innovations, but have produced no clearcut empirical evidence for a deskilling tendency of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century technological change as a whole. Industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rather led to labour polarization, by simultaneously deskilling a large part of the workforce and raising the demand for some (but fewer) high-skilled workers.
Journal Article
Detecting technological progress in Russia: Intersectoral approach or the aggregate economy
We pioneer the estimation of technological progress parameters for Russia in the framework of the neoclassical theory. Implementing the CES production function (CESPF hereafter) as an instrument of output description, we construct a system of cointegrated time series which guarantee no spurious interpretations. Our analysis follows a logical transition from an aggregate to a sectoral level and is based on two convergent datasets of different length. For the aggregate economy most of our accepted models generally forecast a slight labor income share increase under capital-augmenting technical progress biased to labor. Selected models with structural break in 2008–2009 show below-unity elasticity of substitution between labor and capital. Sectoral estimates stand in support of labor income share (LS) growth across six of the eight analyzed economic sectors. We empirically illustrate the rule for LS direction in response to joint values of labor-to-capital elasticity of substitution and a combination of the relative factor intensity and the average growth rate of labor-to-capital ratio. The fact that the values of relative labor intensity in the Mining and Energy & Waste management sectors are less than the growth of labor-to-capital ratio provide no grounds for labor share rise. While our reduced-form evidence suggests that broad capital tax relaxations in these two sectors are unlikely to raise LS, this should be read as a hypothesis for future causal work rather than a policy prescription.
Journal Article
The price of polarization: Estimating task prices under routine-biased technical change
This paper proposes a new approach to estimate task prices per efficiency unit of skill in the Roy model. I show how the sorting of workers into tasks and their associated wage growth can be used to identify changes in task prices under relatively weak assumptions. The estimation exploits the fact that the returns to observable talents will change differentially over time depending on the changes in prices of those tasks that they predict workers to sort into. In the generalized Roy model, also the average non-pecuniary amenities in each task are identified. I apply this approach to the literature on routine-biased technical change, a key prediction of which is that task prices should polarize. Empirical results for male workers in U.S. data indicate that abstract and manual tasks' relative prices indeed increased during the 1990s and 2000s.
Journal Article
Productivity and efficiency of central government departments: a mixed-effect model applied to Dutch data in the period 2012-2019
Central government aims to stimulate the ejficiency and technical change c/public organizations. However, government primarily focuses on the institutions that deliver final public services, but not on the policy making institutions. This article analyses the productivity of central government departments (CGDs). From bureaucratic theory we hypothesize that productivity of these CGDs are low. In order to measure efficiency and technical change we estimate an average cost function based on data of Dutch individual CGDs during the period 2012-2019. The dataset consists of data on various services provided, resource usage and efficiency determinants. The cost function is estimated by a mixed-ejfect non-linear least squares method. The outcomes show that there are large efficiency deferences among CGDs. It is also striking that technical change of the CGDs is nonexistent over time, probably due to a lack of innovative behaviour; unwieldy bureaucracies and increasingly complex paperwork.
Journal Article
U.S. ELASTICITIES OF SUBSTITUTION AND FACTOR AUGMENTATION AT THE INDUSTRY LEVEL
We provide industry-level estimates of the elasticity of substitution (σ) between capital and labor in the United States. We also estimate rates of factor augmentation. Aggregate estimates are produced. Our empirical model comes from the first-order conditions associated with a constant–elasticity of substitution production function. Our data represent 35 industries at roughly the 2-digit SIC level, 1960–2005. We find that aggregate U.S. σ is likely less than 0.620. σ is likely less than unity for a large majority of individual industries. Evidence also suggests that aggregate σ is less than the value-added share-weighted average of industry σ's. Aggregate technical change appears to be net labor–augmenting. This also appears to be true for the large majority of individual industries, but several industries may be characterized by net capital augmentation. When industry-level elasticity estimates are mapped to model sectors, the manufacturing sector σ is lower than that of services; the investment sector σ is lower than that of consumption.
Journal Article
An empirical study on the endogeneity of directed technical change in China
Research on the endogeneity of directed technical change is very interesting and meaningful. If the direction of technical change is endogenous, policy makers can adjust the technical change value of factors according to specific purpose. We establish a theoretical model of the direction of technical change, relative price of factors and international trade under nested and non-nested CES production functions. We use mature measurement methods such as the unit root test and cointegration analysis to test the theoretical model in practice. We find that the direction of technical change is endogenous in China. The change in the relative price of factors in China causes a technical change in the same direction. Meanwhile, international trade intensifies and accelerates the labour augmenting technical change, but blocks the pace of capital augmenting technical change. Under a substitution elasticity of less than one, technical change is biased toward energy and capital in China, and this bias is brought about by the decrease in their relative price and international trade.
Journal Article
ENDOGENOUS TASK-BASED TECHNICAL CHANGE—FACTOR SCARCITY AND FACTOR PRICES
This paper develops a static model of endogenous task-based technical progressto study how factor scarcity induces technological progress and changes in factorprices. The equilibrium technology is multi-dimensional and not strongly factorsavingin the sense of Acemoglu (2010). Nevertheless, labour scarcity induces labourproductivity growth. There is a weak but no strong absolute equilibrium bias. Thismodel provides a plausible interpretation of the famous contention of Hicks (1932)about the role of factor prices and factor endowments for induced innovations. It mayserve as a microfoundation for canonical macro-economic models. Moreover, it accommodatesfeatures like endogenous factor supplies and a binding minimum wage.
Journal Article