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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Development And Testing Of A Purchasing Power Parity Method For Comparing Construction Costs Internationally, Rick Best Jun 2008

The Development And Testing Of A Purchasing Power Parity Method For Comparing Construction Costs Internationally, Rick Best

Rick Best

Over the past fifty to sixty years there have been numerous attempts to compare the performance of the construction industries of different countries. In almost all cases the cost of construction has been an important, sometimes the single parameter Cost performance has sometimes been equated to productivity, and productivity measurement and comparison is attempted by governments and their agencies on a regular basis.

Fundamental to these exercises has been the necessity to bring construction costs in different national currencies to a common base. This is imperative as amounts in different currencies cannot be directly compared.

Money market exchange rates do …


Regional Unemployment And Productivity In Europe, Luca De Benedictis, Roberto Basile May 2008

Regional Unemployment And Productivity In Europe, Luca De Benedictis, Roberto Basile

Luca De Benedictis

We analyse the relationship between regional unemployment and labour productivity in Europe, basing our empirical analysis on the predictions of a Neary-type General Oligopolistic Equilibrium trade model with efficiency-wages. Using semiparametric and dynamic panel data estimators and controlling for other factors, we give evidence of a nonlinear relationship between productivity and regional unemployment in Europe: with a level of productivity smaller than a certain threshold, this relationship is negative, while no relation occurs in the case of higher productivity regions. This evidence proves an important role of a wage-floor (induced by efficiency wages and exacerbated by institutional factors) under which …


Demand And Innovation In Productivity Growth, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi Dec 2007

Demand And Innovation In Productivity Growth, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi

Mario Pianta

The labour productivity impact of demand and innovation is investigated in this paper combining insights from the Kaldorian and Schumpeterian traditions. After a review of studies in such traditions, a general model is proposed for explaining productivity growth in European manufacturing and service industries in the late 1990s, followed by two distinct specifications for the industries oriented toward product innovation, and for those where process innovation dominates. The empirical analysis is based on the match of the SIEPI-CIS2 database developed at the University of Urbino and Eurostat Input–Output Tables at the industry level, for 22 manufacturing sectors and 10 services …


Diversity In Innovation And Productivity In Europe, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi Dec 2007

Diversity In Innovation And Productivity In Europe, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi

Mario Pianta

The diversity in innovation patterns across manufacturing and service industries and in their outcomes in terms of hourly labor productivity are investigated in this article considering six European countries. The Schumpeterian insights into the variety of innovation are developed in this work by identifying different innovation–performance relationships for industries and countries, relying either on the dominant role of product innovation, or on the diffusion of process improvements. Moreover, the “push” effect of innovation is combined with the “pull” effect of demand, by considering the impact of the dynamics of consumption and investment at the sectoral level. The results point out …