Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Pillars Of Growth In Nebraska's Non-Metropolitan Economy, Eric Thompson, Ernie Goss, Chris Decker, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Bruce Johnson, Ben Schmitz, Julian Neira, Pavel Jeutang

Economics Faculty Publications

Agriculture is a critical part of Nebraska’s economy, and changes in the fortunes of agriculture play an important role in the success of the state’s non-metropolitan regions. Trends toward consolidation and rising productivity in agriculture, however, have raised concerns about the future of non-metropolitan Nebraska. Some citizens and policymakers have begun to wonder if the economy can create sufficient job opportunities for non-metropolitan residents. The answer to this question depends not only upon the relative strength of the agricultural sector, but also upon the presence of other industries that can join agriculture as pillars for employment growth in non-metropolitan Nebraska. …

Scale Effects And Labor Productivity, Jürgen Antony

Jürgen Antony

The topic of this thesis is the impact of scale effects onto labor productivity and its implications. Chapter one gives an overview of the economic literature on scale effects. It starts with reviewing early economic writings; summarizes the literature of the new trade theory, the new economic geography and the new growth theory and looks upon scale effects in the economics of integration. Last but not least it motivates the chapters to come. Chapter two deals with wage inequality between different types of labor in models of endogenous growth with scale effects in the growth rate of an economy or …

Foreign Direct Investment And Technology Transfer To Nigerian Manufacturing Firms: Evidence From Empirical Data., Nasiru Musa Yauri

Economic and Financial Review

The paper investigates the vertical effects of FDI on Nigeria manufacturing firms. Specifically, the paper asks, do Nigerian manufacturing firms benefits from FDI? As an investigation into the vertical effects of FDI , the paper attempts to establish whether manufacturing firms in Nigeria that receives FDI benefit from technology flows which comes along with foreign capital. The paper employs data from the World Bank Nigerian manufacturing survey, 2001.

Technological Change And U.S. Productivity Growth In The Interwar Years, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Manufacturing contributed almost all—83 percent—of the growth of total factor productivity in the U.S. private nonfarm economy between 1919 and 1929. During the depression manufacturing TFP growth was not as uniformly distributed, and only half as rapid, accounting for only 48 percent of PNE TFP growth. Yet the overall growth of the residual between 1929 and 1941 was the highest of any comparable period in the twentieth century. This resulted from the combination of a still potent manufacturing contribution with advances in transportation, public utilities, and distribution, fueled in part by investments in public infrastructure.

Technical Change And Us Economic Growth: The Interwar Period And The 1990s, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Multifactor productivity growth in the U.S. economy between 1919 and 1929 was almost entirely attributable to advance within manufacturing. Distributing steam power mechanically over shafts and belts required multistory buildings for economical operation. The widespread diffusion of electric power permitted a shift to single story layouts in which goods flow could be optimized around work stations powered by small electric motors. Within this framework, as well as opportunities to produce a variety of new products, economies of scale and learning by doing permitted rapid and across the board gains in manufacturing productivity. The sector contributed 83 percent of the 2.02 …

2005-07 Does The Use Of Imported Intermediates Increase Productivity? Plant-Level Evidence, Hiroyuki Kasahara, Joel Rodrigue

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Retrospective On The Postwar Productivity Slowdown, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The present study reviews the “productivity slowdown” of the 1970s and 1980s. The study also develops a new data set — industrial data available back to 1948 — as well as a new set of tools for decomposing changes in productivity growth. The major result of this study is that the productivity slowdown of the 1970s has survived three decades of scrutiny, conceptual refinements, and data revisions. The slowdown was primarily centered in those sectors that were most energy-intensive, were hardest hit by the energy shocks of the 1970s, and therefore had large output declines. In a sense, the energy …

Measurement And Assessment Of Efficiency And Productivity In Kentucky State Government Services, William H. Hoyt

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the executive summary:

This report examines the provision of a variety of government services within Kentucky. The provision of these public services, specifically the cost of providing these services is examined for the years 1992, 1997, and 2002. In addition, employment and salaries in government services are also examined. In addition to comparing costs within Kentucky during this period, the costs of providing public services are also compared to costs of the same government services by its neighboring states (Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Rozlyn Coleman, " Confronting Budget Deficits" Imf Economic Issues No. 3, 2000: A Review., Newman C. Oputa

Economic and Financial Review

The document is based on the fiscal operations of major industrial countries and presents a major concern that it is not the size of the budget as a ratio of the gross domestic product (GDP) that matters, but the persistence of budgetary shortfalls during long periods of peace, when governments traditionally offset their debts and save for the future.

Kids At Work: The Value Of Employer-Sponsored On-Site Child Care Centers, Rachel Connelly, Deborah S. Degraff, Rachel A. Willis

Upjohn Press

Connelly, DeGraff, and Willis chronicle the trends in the growth in on-site child care programs and perform analyses that shed light on the value of employer-sponsored child care to employees. The authors note that employees may not be the only ones to benefit. Employers may be able to gain wage savings for the firm.

A Tale Of Two Clams: Policy Anticipation And Industry Productivity, Sylvia Brandt

PERI Working Papers

Sound environmental regulation must achieve environmental objectives while maximizing economic efficiency. This paper evaluates the impact of regulation on efficiency by measuring annual productivity across regulatory regimes in two similar fisheries with differing policy expectations. Anticipation of regulatory change produced strategic behavior in one fishery, leading to depressed productivity; in the other, regulatory change was not expected, and productivity did not suffer. These results imply that fisheries regulation should take into account both firms’ policy expectations and the potentially perverse incentives that may be created by policy change.

Office Workers' Productivity Enhanced By Ergonomics, Kelly Derango

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Pollution Abatement Costs: Hurting Or Helping Productivity?, Jacqueline M. Volkman

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

This paper analyzes the effect that regulatory inputs or expenditures for labor, materials, and capital have on productivity for three industries (blast furnaces and steel mills, alkalies and chlorine, and petroleum refining). Data is examined from 1973 to 1994 and the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) is considered. The pattern of pollution abatement expenditures for three media, water, air, and solid wastes, is also examined graphically. In addition, the measurement for TFP is adjusted to net out regulatory inputs for labor, materials, and capital. A comparison between the original and adjusted measurement of TFP is made for each …

The Progress Of Computing, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The present study analyzes computer performance over the last century and a half. Three results stand out. First, there has been a phenomenal increase in computer power over the twentieth century. Performance in constant dollars or in terms of labor units has improved since 1900 by a factor in the order of 1 trillion to 5 trillion, which represent compound growth rates of over 30 percent per year for a century. Second, there were relatively small improvements in efficiency (perhaps a factor of ten) in the century before World War II. Around World War II, however, there was a substantial …

The Great Divide: A Comparison Of Kentucky And Ohio Counties Along The Ohio River (1840-1860), Jennie Berry

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

This paper operates under an opposite assumption and, instead, argues that the Kentucky-Ohio border is an ideal test case for the null hypothesis that the institution of slavery per se had no significant economic effects. Kentucky and Ohio counties tracing the Ohio River are composed of the same soil and face similar weather conditions (Blanford, 2001; Barnhisel, 2001; Foster, 2001). Both regions likewise claim the same geographical access to outside markets.

Productivity Growth And The New Economy, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The present study is the third in a series of three papers devoted to issues in the measurement of productivity and productivity growth. The major findings are as follows. First, this study shows that the new data set used here, which develops data on total output, business sector output, and “well-measured” output, and relying on income-side data, provides a useful supplement to existing data sets. Second, there has clearly been a rebound in labor-productivity growth in recent years. All three sectoral definitions show a major acceleration in labor productivity in the last three years of the period (1996-98) relative to …

New Data And Output Concepts For Understanding Productivity Trends, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The present study is the second is a series of three papers devoted to issues in the measurement of productivity and productivity growth. The contributions of the present paper are three. First, it introduces a new approach to measuring industrial productivity based on income-side data that are published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The data are internally consistent in that both inputs and outputs are income-side measures of value added, whereas the usual productivity measures combine expenditure-side output measures with income-side input measures. Second, because of interest in the “new economy,” we have also constructed a set of …

Alternative Methods For Measuring Productivity Growth, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The present study is a contribution to the theory of the measurement of productivity growth. First, it examines the welfare-theoretic basis for measuring productivity growth and shows that the ideal welfare-theoretic measure is a chain index of productivity growth rates of different sectors which uses current output weights. Second, it lays out a technique for decomposing productivity growth which separates aggregate productivity growth into three factors — the pure productivity effect, the effect of changing shares, and the effect of different productivity levels. Finally, it shows how to apply the theoretically correct measure of productivity growth and indicates which of …

Trending Time Series And Macroeconomic Activity: Some Present And Future Challenges, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Some challenges for econometric research on trending time series are discussed in relation to some perceived needs of macroeconomics and macroeconomic policy making.

Free Agents, Fire Sales, And Fungoes: An Econometric Examination Of Team Success In Major League Baseball, Corey R. Maynard

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

This paper explores what good organizational strategies baseball teams use to put themselves into the group of those that win more often than they lose, and conversely, what poor strategies cause teams to fall into the group of those who lose more than they win.

Pensions And Productivity, Stuart Dorsey, Christopher Mark Cornwell, David A. Macpherson

Upjohn Press

Employers typically view their investment in pension plans as a means of providing retirement income for their workers. Economists, on the other hand, view pension programs as a way to increase workplace productivity. Dorsey, Cornwell and Macpherson explore the theoretical and empirical basis for this perspective and, in the process, offer a complete and up-to-date discussion on the productivity theory of pensions.

Human Capital And Economic Development, Sisay Asefa Editor, Wei-Chiao Huang Editor

Upjohn Press

Six essays are presented that explore human capital and its relationship to issues such as demographics, population growth, families, workplace training and economic progress.

Profit Sharing: Does It Make A Difference?: The Productivity And Stability Effects Of Employee Profit-Sharing Plans, Douglas Kruse

Upjohn Press

Kruse details the reasons profit sharing plans are implemented and the systemic factors within firms, particularly in relation to unions, that influence whether or not they are successful. Presented is evidence based on a unique database developed from 500 public U.S. firms - matched to firm performance over the period of 1979-1991 - on the two central theories related to profit sharing: 1) The Productivity Theory, and 2) the Stability Theory

All Work: An Evaluation Of Worker's Attitudes, Worker's Behavior And Productivity In The U.S. Automobile Industry, Todd M.R. Baker

Honors Papers

The American automobile industry has become extremely sensitive to the increased number of Japanese cars and plants in the United States. Some parties believe that in order to operate competitively in the future labor and management must continue to find ways to work together and improve relations. Irving Bluestone, a former labor leader, believes that humanistic relations between the two parties are essential to the welfare of everyone involved. Joint efforts between the workers and management need to be continued and expanded. Both sides can benefit from such cooperation.

America's Rendezvous With Reality, Murray L. Weidenbaum

Murray Weidenbaum Publications

This piece deals with finding solutions to economic policy problems after the Reagan Administration.

Changes In R&D Expenditure And Productivity Growth: A Causal Analysis, Mawdudur Rahman, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

A study was conducted to directly test the presence of causal relationship between changes in research and development (R&D) expenditure and productivity growth. Granger causality tests are performed using annual time series data for the period 1956-1983. Three measures of productivity are used -- National Income, National Income per person employed, and National Income per hour of work in the nonresidential business sector. Results show that changes in R&D expenditure affect the growth rate of the 3 productivity measures with different degrees of intensity. National Income per hour of work shows the highest growth rate, with the peak effect occurring …

Are Cyclical Fluctuations In Productivity Due More To Supply Shocks Or Demand Shocks?, Matthew D. Shapiro

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Measured productivity is strongly procyclical. Real business cycle theories suggest that actual fluctuations in productivity are the source of fluctuations in aggregate output. Keynesian theories maintain that fluctuations in aggregate output come from shocks to aggregate demand. Keynesian theories appeal to labor hoarding or off the production function behavior to explain the procyclicality of productivity. If observed productivity shocks are true productivity shocks, a function of factor prices should covary exactly with productivity. In annual data for United States industries, that function of factor prices and conventionally-measured productivity move together very closely. Moreover, their difference is uncorrelated with aggregate output.

Is Native Range The Best? Some Pasture Mangement Alternatives, Richard Shane

Economics Commentator

No abstract provided.

Motivation And The Poor Worker, Charles Barry Pfitzner

Economics Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.