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on Technology and Industrial Dynamics |
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Issue of 2014‒02‒21
six papers chosen by Fulvio Castellacci Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) |
| By: | Robert J. Gordon |
| Abstract: | The United States achieved a 2.0 percent average annual growth rate of real GDP per capita between 1891 and 2007. This paper predicts that growth in the 25 to 40 years after 2007 will be much slower, particularly for the great majority of the population. Future growth will be 1.3 percent per annum for labor productivity in the total economy, 0.9 percent for output per capita, 0.4 percent for real income per capita of the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution, and 0.2 percent for the real disposable income of that group. The primary cause of this growth slowdown is a set of four headwinds, all of them widely recognized and uncontroversial. Demographic shifts will reduce hours worked per capita, due not just to the retirement of the baby boom generation but also as a result of an exit from the labor force both of youth and prime-age adults. Educational attainment, a central driver of growth over the past century, stagnates at a plateau as the U.S. sinks lower in the world league tables of high school and college completion rates. Inequality continues to increase, resulting in real income growth for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution that is fully half a point per year below the average growth of all incomes. A projected long-term increase in the ratio of debt to GDP at all levels of government will inevitably lead to more rapid growth in tax revenues and/or slower growth in transfer payments at some point within the next several decades. There is no need to forecast any slowdown in the pace of future innovation for this gloomy forecast to come true, because that slowdown already occurred four decades ago. In the eight decades before 1972 labor productivity grew at an average rate 0.8 percent per year faster than in the four decades since 1972. While no forecast of a future slowdown of innovation is needed, skepticism is offered here, particularly about the techno-optimists who currently believe that we are at a point of inflection leading to faster technological change. The paper offers several historical examples showing that the future of technology can be forecast 50 or even 100 years in advance and assesses widely discussed innovations anticipated to occur over the next few decades, including medical research, small robots, 3-D printing, big data, driverless vehicles, and oil-gas fracking. |
| JEL: | D24 E02 E66 J11 J15 O11 O31 Q43 |
| Date: | 2014–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19895&r=tid |
| By: | Dachs, Bernhard; Ebersberger, Bernd; Kinkel, Steffen; Som, Oliver |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effects of production offshoring on the innovation activities of manufacturing firms in the home country. The analysis is based on a dataset of more than 3000 manufacturing firms from seven European countries. We find that offshoring firms on average employ a higher share of R&D and design personnel, introduce new products more frequently to the market, and invest more frequently in advanced process technologies compared to non-offshoring firms. Concerns that offshoring may hurt innovation because of the lost links between production and product development are not supported by the evidence. -- |
| Keywords: | offshoring,R&D,home country effects,investment,product innovation,process innovation |
| JEL: | F23 O31 O33 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fisidp:39&r=tid |
| By: | Gu, Wulong Lafrance, Amelie |
| Abstract: | This paper examines two aspects of productivity growth in Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications industry. The first is the extent to which aggregate MFP growth in the sector came from scale economies as opposed to technical progress. The second is the extent to which aggregate labour productivity growth and MFP growth came from within-firm growth, and from the effect of reallocation due to firm entry and exit and within incumbents' the dynamic forces associated with competitive change. |
| Keywords: | Information and communications technology, Economic accounts, Telecommunications industries, Information and communications technology sector, Productivity accounts |
| Date: | 2014–02–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp5e:2014089e&r=tid |
| By: | Jun Wang; John Whalley |
| Abstract: | We present estimates of 4 and 8 firm concentration ratios by industry and in weighted aggregate form for the manufacturing sector for Chinese enterprises for 2002 and 2007. These are then compared to available estimates for the same years and industrial classification for the US. These comparisons clearly point in the direction of China having sharply lower concentration ratios, in the order of one half of the US for 4 firm ratios. One possible implication is that markets for Chinese manufactured products are considerably more competitive than in the US. |
| JEL: | L16 |
| Date: | 2014–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19898&r=tid |
| By: | Agenor, Pierre-Richard; Canuto, Otaviano |
| Abstract: | This paper studies interactions between access to finance, product innovation, and labor supply in a two-period overlapping generations model with an endogenous skill distribution and credit market frictions. In the model lack of access to finance (induced by high monitoring costs) has an adverse effect on innovation activity not only directly but also indirectly, because too few individuals may choose to invest in skills. If monitoring costs fall with the number of successful projects, multiple equilibria may emerge, one of which, a middle-income trap, characterized by low wages in the design sector, a low share of the labor force engaged in innovation activity, and low growth. A sufficiently ambitious policy aimed at alleviating constraints on access to finance by innovators may allow a country to move away from such a trap by promoting the production of ideas and improving incentives to invest in skills. |
| Keywords: | Labor Policies,Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform |
| Date: | 2014–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6767&r=tid |
| By: | Bodas Freitas , Isabel Maria; Geuna, Aldo; Lawson, Cornelia; Rossi, Federica (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | We investigate under what circumstances firms (industry inventors) are more likely to engage in interactions where governance of the relationship is shared between the firm and the university, as opposed to interactions where the relationship is governed unilaterally by the firm. Using PIEMINV, an original dataset of European industry patents in the Italian region of Piedmont, we analyse the characteristics of inventors with diverse experience in projects involving interactions with universities, governed by institutional contracts or personal contracts. Our results suggest that reliance among inventors of the two forms of governance is almost equal, and that unilateral governance forms are preferred when there are high levels of trust among the parties based on embeddedness in local social and education networks. This is likely because it involves less cumbersome and more direct interactions. We find also that knowledge characteristics are not particularly important discriminants of the choice between governance forms: the advantage of shared governance seems to reside mainly in the possibility to mitigate monitoring and asymmetric information problems in contexts of relatively low levels of mutual knowledge and trust. |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:labeco:201401&r=tid |