nep-eff New Economics Papers
on Efficiency and Productivity
Issue of 2021‒12‒13
twelve papers chosen by



  1. Environmental Productivity and Convergence of European Manufacturing Industries. Are they Under Pressure? By Stergiou, Eirini; Rigas, Nikos; Kounetas, Konstantinos
  2. Impact of Grassland Transfer on Technical Efficiency of Livestock Production in Northern China By Feng, Xiaolong
  3. Adoption of Multiple Agricultural Technologies and Impact on Productivity in Rural Nigeria – a Plot-Level Analysis By Amankwah, Akuffo
  4. Seeds, Water, and Markets to Increase Wheat Productivity in Bihar, India By Singh, Vartika; Kishore, Avinash
  5. Direct and indirect effects of universities on European regional productivity By E. Marrocu; R. Paci; S. Usai
  6. Resource Misallocation Among Listed Firms in China: The Evolving Role of State-Owned Enterprises By Ms. Emilia M Jurzyk; Mr. Cian Ruane
  7. Advancing Universal Health Coverage in the COVID-19 Era : An Assessment of Public Health Services Technical Efficiency and Applied Cost Allocation in Cambodia By Robert John Kolesar; Peter Bogetoft; Vanara Chea; Guido Erreygers; Sambo Pheakdey
  8. Cost Impact of Inefficiency in Small-Scale Paddy Rice Production in Edo State, Nigeria By Ojogho, Osaihiiomwan; Imade, Osagie
  9. Resource Misallocation in India: The Role of Cross-State Labor Market Reform By Piyaporn Sodsriwiboon; Mr. Adil Mohommad; Charlotte Sandoz
  10. Korea’s Growth Prospects: Overcoming Demographics and COVID-19 By Mr. Andrew J Swiston
  11. Home sweet home: Assessment of Readiness of Croatian Companies to Introduce I4.0 Technologies By Rajka Hrbić; Tomislav Grebenar
  12. Better to grow or better to improve? Measuring environmental efficiency in OECD countries with a Stochastic Environmental Kuznets Frontier By Oleg Badunenko; Marzio Galeotti; Lester C. Hunt

  1. By: Stergiou, Eirini; Rigas, Nikos; Kounetas, Konstantinos
    Abstract: European industries are under pressure regarding their environmental performance and productivity growth. The current energy crisis offsets governments efforts to achieve carbon neutrality while removing significant degrees of freedom in terms of firm's competitiveness. This paper studies environmental productivity and its components at a European industrial level using a dataset of 13 industries of the manufacturing sector from 27 European countries over the 1995-2014 period. Our results point out that industrial environmental productivity has deteriorated across Europe with best practice change being the main contributor. In addition, referring to the technological leaders in Europe, the findings point out that low tend to follow the middle-high technology industries. Finally, the non-convergence hypothesis and the creation of discrete clubs for the productivity index case and its components are supported.
    Keywords: European Industries; Metafrontier Malmquist Luenberger index; Convergence; Technological heterogeneity
    JEL: C61 D24 L60 Q43 Q56
    Date: 2021–11–20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110780&r=
  2. By: Feng, Xiaolong
    Keywords: Livestock Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315368&r=
  3. By: Amankwah, Akuffo
    Keywords: Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315178&r=
  4. By: Singh, Vartika; Kishore, Avinash
    Keywords: Productivity Analysis, Crop Production/Industries
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:315022&r=
  5. By: E. Marrocu; R. Paci; S. Usai
    Abstract: For the first time we investigate the effects that Universities exert on Total Factor Productivity dynamics for a very ample sample of 270 European regions over the period 2000-2016. This novel contribution goes beyond the traditional human capital and technological capital indirect effects and proposes a sound empirical assessment of the highly differentiated "third mission" activities. These are unique to engaged academic institutions and shape the key role they play as societal development-promoting agencies. Our analysis provides evidence of sizeable and robust universities direct supply-side effects, which complement the traditional ones in driving European regional productivity growth.
    Keywords: university;Regional Total Factor Productivity;human capital;technological capital;Universities' third mission
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:202107&r=
  6. By: Ms. Emilia M Jurzyk; Mr. Cian Ruane
    Abstract: We document that publicly listed Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are less productive and profitable than publicly listed firms in which the state has no ownership stake. In particular, Chinese listed SOEs are more capital intensive and have a lower average product of capital than non-SOEs. These productivity differences increased between 2002 and 2009, and remain sizeable in 2019. Using a heterogeneous firm model of resource misallocation, we find that there are large potential productivity gains from reforms which could equalize the marginal products of listed SOEs and listed non-SOEs.
    Keywords: State-Owned Enterprises;Misallocation;WP;private firm;firm distortion;productivity difference;representative firm;firm Fe;productivity gap;technical efficiency; Productivity; Capital productivity; Public enterprises; Total factor productivity; Labor productivity
    Date: 2021–03–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/075&r=
  7. By: Robert John Kolesar (Abt Associates, UA - University of Antwerp, Cambodian Ministry of Economy and Finance, CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne); Peter Bogetoft (CBS - Copenhagen Business School [Copenhagen]); Vanara Chea (Cambodian Ministry of Economy and Finance); Guido Erreygers (UA - University of Antwerp); Sambo Pheakdey (Cambodian Ministry of Economy and Finance)
    Abstract: COVID-19 is causing serious impacts on tax revenue and consequentially on public health budgets. This study assesses Cambodia's public health services technical efficiency, unit costs, and utilization rates to quantify the extent to which current health financing can accommodate the expansion of social health protection coverage. Overall, for the public health system to be fully efficient output would need to increase by 34 and 73 percent for hospitals and health centers, respectively. We find public sector service quality, private sector providers, and non-discretionary financing to be statistically significant factors affecting technical efficiency. This study pioneers the application of Data Envelopment Analysis-Aumann-Shapley applied cost allocation to the health sector, enabling unit cost estimation for the major social health insurance payment categories. We estimate there is potential supply-side 'service space' to expand population coverage to an additional 4.69 million social health insurance beneficiaries with existing financing if the public health system were fully efficient.
    Keywords: health service efficiency,social health protection,costing,cost allocation,Universal Health Coverage
    Date: 2021–08–20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03437398&r=
  8. By: Ojogho, Osaihiiomwan; Imade, Osagie
    Keywords: Crop Production/Industries
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae21:314938&r=
  9. By: Piyaporn Sodsriwiboon; Mr. Adil Mohommad; Charlotte Sandoz
    Abstract: At the macro level, productivity is driven by technology and the efficiency of resource allocation, as outcomes of firms’ decision making. The relatively high level of resource misallocation in India’s formal manufacturing sector is well documented. We build on this research to further investigate the drivers of misallocation, exploiting micro-level variation across Indian states. We find that states with less rigid labor markets have lesser misallocation. We also examine the interaction of labor market rigidities with informality which is a key feature of India’s labor markets. Our results suggest that reducing labor market rigidities in states with high informality has a net positive effect on aggregate productivity.
    Keywords: Misallocation;India;Firm level;Structural reforms.;WP;price distortion;product market regulation;revenue TFP;balance sheet data;exit from informality;firm TFPR
    Date: 2021–02–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/051&r=
  10. By: Mr. Andrew J Swiston
    Abstract: Korea’s economy has leaped to high-income status thanks to several decades of sustained high growth. However, population aging and shifts in global demand provide headwinds for future growth and Korea now faces the effects of COVID-19 on economic activity. This paper asseses the expected drag on potential growth from these factors and discusses policies that could provide offsetting upward momentum by facilitating structural transformation. We find that potential output growth slowed to about 2½ percent before the COVID-19 pandemic and would have fallen to 2 percent by 2030, mainly due to demographic factors. Moreover, there is a possibility of scarring from the COVID-19 shock as adjustment frictions from structural rigidities interact with shifts in demand and supply patterns, lowering investment and labor force participation. At the same time, industry-level analysis suggests ample scope to raise productivity, especially in services where productivity gains have lagged. Addressing these rigidities could offset a large proportion of the expected downward pressure on potential output.
    Keywords: Korea; productivity; demographics; population aging; potential output; potential growth; multivariate filter; accelerator model; structural reform; COVID-19; growth decomposition; productivity gain; Korea's economy; capacity utilization result; industry categorization; productivity comparison; Labor force participation; Capacity utilization; Total factor productivity; Global
    Date: 2021–03–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/092&r=
  11. By: Rajka Hrbić (The Croatian National Bank, Croatia); Tomislav Grebenar (The Croatian National Bank, Croatia)
    Abstract: The main topic of this paper is to estimate the possibility and inclination of Croatian companies towards technology and inovation as well as to analize advantages, limitations and risks involved with this significant technological leap. In this paper, we analized 7.147 of Croatian business entities operating in different industries. Starting point in this research is to identify other subjects which could be users of I4.0 or its elements, based on the simmilarity of indicators with indicators of a sample of 58 identified I4.0 companies. We developed machine learning model by using eXtreme Gradient Boosting algoritm (XGBoost) for this purpose, an approach which has not been used in any similar reserches. This research shows that the main difference between I4.0 and traditional industry is mostly observable in significantly better businesess performance of investment indicators, cost efficiency, technical equipment and market competitivness. Riskiness of I4.0 companies is significantly lower than the riskiness of traditional ones. We identified 141 companies (1,97% of total analized sample) as potential users of I4.0, which make around 27% of total assets of the analised sample and around 26% of revenues.
    Keywords: Industry 4.0, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), artificial intelligence, robotics, high-tech companies, machine learning, impacts of I4.0 on bussines results
    JEL: C45 D22 D24 O14 O32 O33
    Date: 2021–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hnb:wpaper:63&r=
  12. By: Oleg Badunenko (Brunel University); Marzio Galeotti (University of Milan); Lester C. Hunt (University of Portsmouth)
    Abstract: The standard approach to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) holds that as a country develops and GDP per capita grows environmental degradation initially increases but eventually it reaches a turning point where environmental degradation begins to decline. Environmental degradation takes many forms, one of them being emissions of harmful gases. According to the EKC concept, a country can reduce emissions by ‘growing’. The standard approach implicitly assumes that a country emits as little as possible for its economic development, whereas in reality, a country might emit above the best attainable level of emissions. Therefore, emissions could be reduced before and after the turning point by becoming more environmentally efficient – i.e., ‘improving’ the emissions level. This article proposes a Stochastic Environmental Kuznets Frontier (SEKF) which is estimated for CO2 emissions for OECD countries and used to benchmark each country before and after the turning point differently, thus, indicating how a country could ‘grow’ and/or ‘improve’ to reduce its CO2 emissions. Additionally, we analyse the role of the stringency of environmental policies in reducing a country’s carbon inefficiency measured by the distance from the benchmark EKC and find widespread carbon inefficiencies that could be reduced by more stringent market-based environmental policies.
    Keywords: Environment and growth, Environmental Kuznets Curve, CO2 emissions, Panel data, OECD countries, Stochastic frontier approach, Stochastic Environmental Kuznets Frontier, Environmental Policy Stringency
    JEL: O44 Q56 Q54 C13 C33
    Date: 2021–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2021.28&r=

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