Questions tagged [productivity]
A measure of efficiency in production for some given set of inputs
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Data on labour productivity in India
I am trying to find historical data at the district, or ideally at the city-level on labour productivity (by sector, with a special focus on agriculture) or perhaps data on a similar measure?
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1answer
18 views
Measurement for the downstream use of a commodity
I am looking to find a measurement that would tell me the size of the market of the downstream use of some particular commodity. For example, salt or wheat would be used by many companies downstream. ...
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42 views
Why labor-augmenting technological progress increases employment and wages?
My textbook says that advances in technology typically raise the marginal product of labor and shift the labor demand curve to the right and calls it labor-augmenting technological advances. The book ...
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19 views
CES aggregator for intermediates with heterogeneous productivity
I'm following Atkeson, Burstein (2019 JPE), and cannot understand the aggregation result.
There is measure $M(z)$ of firms with productivity $z$, with production function
$$
y(z) = z k(z)^\alpha l(z)^...
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1answer
37 views
Low oil price and impact
Today I read an artcicle about the falling oil price (maybe it'll go under 30$ per barel the next days). Why is this a bad news? Lower oil price can give an advantage for a higher productivity.
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1answer
26 views
How would increase labor productivity lead to improved living standards of people in an economy?
I would like to know more about the mechanisms through which higher labor productivity would translate into higher living standards for a population in a given economy.
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1answer
38 views
Measuring productivity with the Törnqvist index
I have a sample of companies, of which I want to calculate the productivity of each individual firm relative to a hypothetical firm in the industry.
Choosing the measurement method was not easy, but ...
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1answer
19 views
What is the average percent of value an employee makes which he gets on salary (called)?
I'm looking for any statistics showing the average percent of money employees get from the monetary value they create, primarily from the US or EU. Is there a term for this ratio?
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1answer
36 views
BreakEven/productivity/salary/employees
If employees’ salaries are increased by 20%, what is the increase in productivity required to break even?
Can someone assist me in solving this question?
Productivity = (output per period)/(number ...
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2answers
27 views
Are there any economic theories around the concept of companies focusing on that which is easier to calcuate?
A lot of the organisations I have worked for have focused on that which is easy to calculate.
For example, direct cost savings are often easy to calculate, but analysing the wider implications of a ...
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2answers
31 views
When does the law of diminishing returns apply?
Law of diminishing returns does not always apply:
The law of diminishing returns states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, ...
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2answers
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Does recycling lead to fewer jobs?
Say I buy a glass bottle, I can either put it in the landfill or recycle it.
My understanding is, glass will breakdown into sand. (Not sure how well though, since we sometimes find glass from Roman ...
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2answers
35 views
Persistent changes in relative prices due to productivity differences
I read a couple of years ago that in the long run (in centuries) the relative price between, say, schooling and agriculture keeps increasing, since the latter sector gets more and more productive, ...
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1answer
37 views
Why is increased productivity infinitely good
From investopedia:
Supply rises with productivity, dropping real prices and increasing
real wages; it lifts people out of poverty and allows them to focus on
efforts beyond mere survival.
I ...
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0answers
16 views
Is the definition of Investment variable in Economics?
I studied that Investment is the expenditure incurred on the procurement of such goods that would help us in production of goods and services.
And mainly consists of Fixed and Inventory Investment
...
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2answers
112 views
Can we see the computer age in the productivity statistics?
Robert Solow famously said:
You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics
This quote is often linked with the productivity paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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1answer
54 views
Total factor productivity and revenue
On page 116 of The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective Robert Allen writes
"...the total factor productivity of enclosed farms was 18 per cent
higher than that of open fields. If ...
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1answer
95 views
Tax system is progressive or regressive
Let´s discuss a little!
When the direct effect of a tax or transfer policy (compared to what would happen in the absence of the policy) is a reduction in inequality, it is called progressive policy. ...
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0answers
46 views
How can the number of hairdressers in the UK be up 50% since 2010?
In this recent article, The Economist argues that one of the reasons behind the anaemic recent wage growth in Britain is that the recent job growth has been concentrated in lower-productivity jobs and ...
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3answers
62 views
What's a product that historically has always had the same value, and probably will in the future?
Money usually has inflation tied to it, but is there a product that has stayed around the same value world wide for a very long time, and probably will for a very long time as well (something like 100 ...
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2answers
234 views
Empirical explanation on divergence between productivity and wages since the 70s
There is a well know graph, that shows a tight link between productivity and wages, until the 70s, and a break of the link since:
There's a lot of possible explanations for this, I keep hearing more ...
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2answers
31 views
2 firms production decision for one agent
I'm trying to solve the optimal production $\{x,y\}$ for a risk neutral agent with weight $w$ in firm $X$ and weight $1-w$ in firm $Y$. Each firm has marginal cost $c^X$ and $c^Y$ respectively. The ...
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1answer
66 views
Does credit really help an economy?
I'm reading Ray Dalio's How the Economic Machine Works, and although I understand the role of credit in an economy, I don't understand whether credit actually adds any value to an economy.
Ray says ...
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1answer
40 views
Are slacks the same as mix-inefficiency?
On the diagram below it is stated that A' has input slacks as it could reduce the amount of $x_2$ and still be on the frontier (by moving to C). However I recall mix-inefficiency having a similar ...
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2answers
255 views
Inclusion of firms on the efficient frontier of a Production Possibility Set
I'm working through Cooper's Data Envelopment Analysis, and they are going over Production Possibility Sets.
They present 9 firms, each with two inputs and one output:
Graphically it easy to see why ...
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3answers
70 views
GDP per Installed Computing Facilities
I would like to quantify the importance of computing power for economic aggregate output in an economy in a "simple" GDP-to-installed-CPU ratio.
The idea is to calculate a measure similar to GDP-to-...
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1answer
29 views
Productivity issue
Could someone help with the following?
Company produces products of daily demand. It employs workers In number of 12 people (HER) Wages of workers. The costs of hiring and firing are 25 per employee, ...
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2answers
662 views
What counts and doesn't count as rent seeking?
Rent seeking is often associated with lobbying.
Investopedia's article on rent seeking states that rent seeking is gaining wealth without "creating" wealth. Is this the only commonly used definition?
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2answers
100 views
Productivity and wages in a task-based model
In a task-based model like the one developed in Acemoglu&Autor 2011 with two types of worker, can the low type have a higher wage with respect to the high type?
More specifically: if the ...
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1answer
71 views
How to improve the underperforming construction productivity by correcting its market failures?
Globally, labor-productivity growth in construction has averaged only 1 percent a year over the past two decades, compared with growth of 2.8 percent for the total world economy and 3.6 percent in the ...
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1answer
100 views
TFP estimation as residual and normality of errors
Economists normally calculate TFP as the residual of a regression on output against K, L, and maybe other variables.
However, a well behaved regression is expected residuals to be normal (https://en....
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1answer
46 views
When does a high markup mean high productivity? Never?
I was reading this article in VoxEU, where the authors (one is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University) make the case that an increasing average mark-up has accounted for much of the late ...
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2answers
134 views
Why are imported Chinese products in India cheaper than those locally produced?
Why an imported Chinese product in India is cheaper compared to a locally manufactured item?
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2answers
98 views
Why are readily available productivity data relative, not absolute?
I've been trying to do some cursory research on labor productivity. In the process, I've noticed that the readily available data in the US, as accessed through either BLS or FRED (yes, I know it's the ...
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4answers
4k views
Labour Saving vs. Labour Augmenting - what is the difference?
It seems reasonable to say that technology generally increases output per unit of labour. Therefore in any factory which has installed new technology one can reasonably expect that for the same ...
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1answer
135 views
Link between Productivity and Labour Force?
In this article from VoxEU, the author states:
By definition growth in output per capita equals growth in labour
productivity times growth in hours per capita. The slowdown in
productivity ...
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1answer
94 views
Has worker productivity decreased since the election of Donald Trump?
Anecdotally, I know that myself and others have felt distracted, depressed and anxious since the election of Donald Trump.
Are there any studies that have objectively sought to measure worker ...
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2answers
3k views
Will SRAS curve definitely shift if LRAS curve shifts?
From what I know, a shift in LRAS is generally caused by a change in maximum productive capacity of an economy, which affects the full-employment output level. Such change in maximum productive ...
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1answer
210 views
Difference between Value-Added TFP and Gross-Output TFP?
I am working with EU-KLEMS data, and I am using TFP growth as a proxy for technological change. However, there are 2 variables for TFP - TFP based on Gross Output and TFP based on Value Added.
I ...
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1answer
92 views
Government Ownership vs Private Ownership
In a debate concerning long term economic strategy, a representative of a left party was trying to support that privatisation and Small Government which minimizes its own activities is not a viable ...
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6k views
Productivity vs real earnings in the US — what happened ca 1974?
Somewhat related to the most recent US elections, I've been researching the whole "white working class" situation, and one strange anomaly has popped up.
When one looks at a graph of productivity (...
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0answers
18 views
References for estimating lifetime earnings lost due to caregiving (health economics)
I am working on a project on the productivity costs for caregivers of people with Disease X, a degenerative disease that affects mobility over time. I am looking for references, either scholarly ...
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3answers
5k views
What are the causes of increase in productivity of labour?
This question has a specific context.
While reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, edited, with notes and marginal summary by Edwin Cannan in 1904, one comes across the following lines on the ...
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34 views
Where to start, to know the cost, in hours of work, necessary to produce one more car (or any other good)?
Let's say I want to buy a car. It costs that, so I can know that, for example, I have to work 3 months to pay for it. But does the car really needs three months of human work to be build?
What is the ...
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1answer
24 views
What are the different patterns/quantity of employment according to demands of different income ranges?
I don't really have that much knowledge on economics or anything, so perhaps that's something I'd find an answer if I just knew the adequate terminology.
Rephrasing/explaining my question: different ...
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0answers
39 views
What are the currently accepted methods to estimate a firm's productivity?
While there are a lot of methods one can think of, like computing the ratio of profits to assets or profits to sales, apparently it is a difficult problem.
It would be useful to know how effectively ...
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3answers
152 views
If automation implicitly increases wealth, why is it generally considered undesirable?
When it comes to the subject of automation, I read that the wide majority of the arguments assume that the profits/savings "vanish", alongside the jobs loss.
I see the reasoning above as flawed ...
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0answers
57 views
Reducing the working hours to 32 hours / week - how much it would affect the prices of commodities?
If the working hours would be reduced from 40 hours / week to 32 hours / week (4 days x 8 hours instead of 5 days x 8 hours), but maintaining the wages at the same levels, then I guess that the price ...
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1answer
1k views
If the Number of Workers in an Economy Doubled, Would Productivity Fall to Half its Former Value?
I am assuming that the production function for the economy has constant returns to scale, and all other inputs stay the same.
These are the steps I have made to try to answer this question:
1) Y/L = ...
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1answer
395 views
Why has increased productivity over the last 100 years not affected how much people work?
If we are generally richer and more productive due to better technology and other factors, why do we still work so much?
I understand that there are various incentives to work (e.g. implicit status ...
