The Economics Of Firm Productivity

"Productivity is an essential concept in almost every field related to Economics and Management. As Paul Krugman wrote in \The Age of Diminishing Expectations (1994)" \Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker." As we slowly exit { at the time of this writing { the nightmare of the 2020 COVID- 19 pandemic, enhancing productivity is even more critical. The crisis has battered global economic activity in an unprecedented way. Entire sectors have been forced to cease trading, and unemployment has risen to record levels. Governments, central banks and international organisations have responded promptly and massively to the shock, sheltering firrms and employees from its impact. This will, however, inevitably further slow aggregate productivity, at least in the short run. Thus, the debate on how to raise productivity is again in the headlines, and that is the subject of this book. We believe that any useful insight must be based on detailed granular information compiled at the level of the firm. To that end we will draw from research and the dataset produced by CompNet1, a large European research initiative that the authors founded a decade ago"--

Provides empirical evidence on how firm-level data can help governments strike the right policy balance and ultimately achieving higher aggregate productivity.

This book addresses the rising productivity gap between the global frontier and other firms, and identifies a number of structural impediments constraining business start-ups, knowledge diffusion and resource allocation (such as barriers to up-scaling and relatively high rates of skill mismatch).

This paper presents empirical evidence on the impact of competition on firm productivity. Using firm-level observations from the World Bank Enterprise Survey database, we find a positive and robust causal relationship between our proxies for competition and our measures of productivity. We also find that countries that implemented product-market reforms had a more pronounced increase in competition, and correspondingly, in productivity: the contribution to productivity growth due to competition spurred by product-market reforms is around 12-15 percent.

This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.

How do firm-specific actions-in particular, innovation-affect firm productivity? And what is the role of the financial sector in facilitating higher productivity? Using a rich firm-level dataset, we find that innovation is crucial for firm performance as it directly and measurably increases productivity. Moreover, its effects on productivity are mediated through the financial sector; firms reap the maximum benefits from innovation in countries with well-developed financial sectors. This effect is particularly important for firms in high-tech sectors, which typically have higher external financing needs.

In recent years, globalization and the expansion of information technologies have reshaped managerial practices, forcing multinational firms to adjust business practices to different environments and domestic companies to adjust to their foreign competitors. In International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms, a distinguished group of contributors examines the phenomenon of widespread differences in managerial practices across firms, establishments within firms, and countries. This volume brings together eight studies that combine qualitative and quantitative insider analysis of business practices such as the use of teams, incentive pay, lean manufacturing, and quality control, revealing the elements that determine which practices are adopted and why. International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms offers a much-needed model for measuring the productivity and performance of international firms in a fast-paced global economy.

Productivity underpins business success and national well-being and thus it is crucial to understand the factors that influence productivity growth. This volume provides a comprehensive exploration into the significance of productivity growth for business, the economy, and for social economic progress. It examines how productivity is defined, measured and implemented. It also surveys the dispersion of productivity across time and place, focusing on the productivity dynamics that either leads to a reallocation of resources that reduces dispersion and increases aggregate productivity or, conversely, allows dispersion to persist behind barriers to productivity-enhancing reallocation. A third focus is an investigation of the drivers of, or impediments to, productivity growth, some of which are organizational in nature and under management control and others of which are institutional in nature and subject to public policy intervention. The Oxford Handbook of Productivity Analysis contains contributions of distinguished productivity experts from around the world who analyze a wide range of timely issues. These issues concern purely analytical topics surrounding the measurement of productivity in various situations, beginning with the ideal situation in which all inputs and all outputs, and their prices, are observed accurately. They also include service sectors such as education in which the services provided are hard to define, much less measure, and other sectors that generate undesirable environmental externalities that are difficult to price and complicate the very definition of productivity. The issues also involve business management topics ranging from the role of business models and benchmarking to the quality of management practices, the adoption of new technologies, and possible complementarities between the two. The relationship between productivity and business performance is also explored. At a more aggregate level the issues range from the impacts of market power, incentive regulation, international trade and global value chains on productivity, to the contribution of productivity to economic development and economic welfare.