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The digital economy provides new impetus for the high-quality development of manufacturing industry. Through the DEA-Malmquist model and panel regression model, this paper confirmed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the development of digital economy and the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of manufacturing industry. The research result is as follows: (1) the development of digital economy can enhance the overall GTFP of manufacturing industry. (2) The green technology progress brought by the development of digital economy is the main path to promote the GTFP of manufacturing industry. (3) The heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of digital economy on GTFP of high pollution manufacturing industry is significantly positive, the impact of labor-intensive manufacturing industry is significantly negative, and the impact of technology intensive manufacturing industry is not obvious. The contributions of this study are as follow. In terms of theory, this study theoretically continues Solow's classical theory, demonstrating the scientific nature of digital technology progress in promoting GTFP growth. In empirical analysis, this study build a new digital economy development level evaluation index system based on the perspective of manufacturing industry. In addition, this study also add a labor-technology-pollution perspective for the development of relevant policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether an increase in wages of foreign firms generates the total factor of productivity (TFP) growth of Indonesian manufacturing firms by considering different job characteristics and geographical boundaries. Using system GMM, the result shows that on average the wage spillover in production jobs within an industry positively affects the TFP, while the wage spillover in non-production jobs contributes negatively. Moreover, the wage spillover in production jobs and non-production jobs within a province do not affect the TFP of Indonesian manufacturing firms. These results indicate that employees in production jobs have larger contributions to increasing TFP than those in non-production jobs when foreign firms increase their wages. Such contributions occur within an industry, not within a province. For the Government, the different contributions to the TFP of firms from wage spillovers in production and non-production jobs indicate the importance of skill mobility to the national economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The improvement of the manufacturing industry's total factor productivity depends not only on innovation factor double circulation, but also on cross-border mobility to a large extent. Methodology: This paper constructs a model that demonstrates the impact of innovation factor double circulation and cross-border flow on the manufacturing industry's total factor productivity, and it seeks to estimate this impact by using panel data from China's manufacturing industry taken from the period 2009–2020. Findings: It finds the path dependence of innovation factors significantly increased their double circulation cost, and did not significantly improve the manufacturing industry's total factor productivity. Conclusion: It finds the path dependence of innovation factors significantly increased their double circulation cost, and did not significantly improve the manufacturing industry's total factor productivity. Cross-border flow improves the marginal efficiency of innovation factors, realizes the spatial agglomeration of high-end innovation factors and greatly promotes the double circulation of innovation factors in a way that effectively improves the manufacturing industry's total factor productivity. Implications: These conclusions have profound policy implications: cross-border flows can promote the incremental adjustment of innovation factors; fully release the development potential and toughness of the dual circulation of innovation factors; and are essentially conducive to improving the manufacturing industry's total factor productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between emissions trading schemes and Research and Development (R&D) productivity based on data from manufacturing industries participating in the Korean Emissions Trading Scheme (KETS). First, this study estimates the total factor R&D productivity by industry, and it is confirmed that changes in R&D productivity vary across industries. The total factor R&D productivity in Korea has been decreasing, but the annual growth trend has been increasing rapidly due to the introduction of the KETS. Based on the estimated R&D productivity, panel data model estimation is executed to reveal the effect of environmental policy on R&D productivity. Empirical results confirm that environmental policy plays a vital role in promoting R&D productivity, and policy stringency affects R&D performance. The results also find that the environmental policy encourages enterprises to participate in KETS for improving R&D productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico's current export-led economy arose from the adoption of a market-driven model based in conditions of technological disarticulation separating dominant transnational firms from the national industrial base. This determined that, in contrast to Verdoorn's analysis, the crucial manufacturing sector would function not as a motor-force inducing a process of autonomous national development by accelerating productivity growth and promoting product and process innovations, but rather would deepen a fragmented process of production, centered on processing imported components under conditions of declining total factor productivity. Despite the profound reordering of its economic geography over the past 30 years, this process has failed to produce legitimate markers of "upgrading". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important embodiment of a country's economic strength and national health, pharmaceutical manufacturing industry has made rapid development in China in recent years. But at the same time, the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is facing many environmental problems, such as large pollution emissions, complex pollution components, controlling difficulties and so on. This paper measures the total factor productivity of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry (HTFP) by using data envelopment analysis with unexpected output, which is more accurate and effective than the traditional model. It also studies the effect of environmental regulation on the total factor productivity of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry (HTFP) by establishing panel data regression model and spatial econometric model based on 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2019, which enriches the research results in the field of cleaning in pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Environmental regulation and total factor productivity of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry have significant spatial autocorrelation, showing "high-high" or "low-low" spatial aggregation characteristics; (2) Environmental regulation has a significant promoting effect on improving pharmaceutical manufacturing total factor productivity in local and surrounding areas, and there are differences in the impact of eastern, central and western regions; (3) Green technology, production technology and industrial structure play an important role in the impact of environmental regulation on pharmaceutical manufacturing total factor productivity, which provides theoretical guidance and policy recommendations for improving the level of total factor productivity of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the environmental aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of big data, the furniture manufacturing industry takes digitization and intelligence as its core, and its servitization degree is constantly improving. In this paper, based on input-output table data from major manufacturing countries throughout the world in the period 2000–2014, this study empirically analyzes the impact of servitization on the industrial performance and productivity of the furniture manufacturing industry and finds that servitization level of the global furniture industry is about 20%, showing small growth in the sample period. Developed countries are in the leading position in the process of servitization strategy, and the servitization level among countries is gradually converging. Furniture manufacturing industry does not show a servitization dilemma, and servitization has a positive impact on industry performance and total factor productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the linkage between manufacturing industry and logistics industry is conducive to explore and improve the efficiency of the common development of them. In order to study the interaction of logistics industry on the development of manufacturing industry and the development of two-industry-linkage, it first calculates the high-quality development level of logistics industry and manufacturing industry, then uses the coupling coordination model to theoretically analyze and empirically test the coupling and coordinated development level of high-quality development of logistics industry and manufacturing industry from three aspects: coupling degree, coordination degree and coupling coordination degree, and based on the perspective of integration field theory, it takes the three basic synthetic fields of logistics integrator, logistics base-nuclear and logistics connection-key as the analysis dimension, PVAR model was introduced for in-depth analysis the impact of logistics industry on manufacturing industry and the level of the two-industry-linkage. It was found that the high-quality development of China's logistics industry and manufacturing industry is close on the whole, and the development trend is consistent, the high-quality development of them is mainly caused by the change of scale, but there is no obvious change in technical efficiency, which also provides a way for the high-quality development of the two-industry-linkage in the future. The two-industry-linkage mostly belongs to the situation of low-level mutual restriction, which has not yet reached a high level of mutual promotion, resulting in the overall coupling coordination degree basically in a state of barely coordination. The development of logistics industry and manufacturing industry need to go through certain practice and running in, when there is an error matching between the two, the logistics industry will inhibit the two-industry-linkage. When the economy develops to a certain extent, the expansion of the logistics system scale to the level of the two-industry-linkage is not necessarily beneficial, blindly exceeding the demand for logistics investment will cause a waste of resources, which is not conducive to the high-quality development of the logistics industry and the coupling and coordinated development of the two industries. In the long run, the change of the logistics basic-nuclear capacity, the logistics integrator scale and logistics connection-key level will have a positive impact on the change of green total factor productivity in manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to describe the performance of the total productivity of the manufacturing factors in the Northern border region of Mexico during the period 1993-2018. The methodological approach is focused on Solow's Residual and Harberger's Sunrise/Sunset diagrams to identify the contributions of each of the states. The main findings of the research indicate significant increases in the sources of growth for the region. In addition, the region's progress is diversified among the entities, with Nuevo León being the most prominent. It is concluded that the northern border region has become the largest pole of job creation in the country's manufacturing sector, although it has been limited in terms of total factor productivity. This makes it necessary to develop intraregional policies with specific measures that improve aggregate productivity in each state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial sustainability is an important attribute and becomes a parameter of the business success. Quality improvement with an indicator of increasing process capability will affect productivity improvements and lead to industrial competitiveness and maintain industrial sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to obtain a relationship between the consistency of the DMAIC phase to increase the sigma level in productivity improvement and industrial sustainability. This paper applied for a systematic literature review from various sources of trusted articles from 2006 to 2019 using the keywords "Six Sigma, Productivity, and Industrial Sustainability." A matrix was developed to provide synthesis and summary of the literature. Six Sigma approach has been successful in reducing product variation, defects, cycle time, production costs, as well as increasing customer satisfaction, cost savings, profits, and competitiveness to maintain industrial sustainability. Extraction and synthesis in this study managed to obtain seven objectives value that found a consistent relationship between the DMAIC phase of increasing sigma levels, productivity, and industrial sustainability. The broad scope of Six Sigma literature is very beneficial for organizations to understand the critical variables and key success factors in Six Sigma implementation, which leads to substantial long-term continuous improvement, the value of money, and business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of market distortions in the manufacturing sector in Morocco. Recent microdata are used to calculate the extent of resource misallocation associated to these distortions and the potential total factor productivity (TFP) gain resulting from their removal. Market distortions in the manufacturing sector in Morocco are higher compared with developed countries and slightly more important compared with other developing countries, such as China and India. These distortions decreased between 2007 and 2013. Full liberalization would raise TFP by about 84%. If distortions are removed to the level of selected developed countries with better resource allocation, the increase in TFP would be of 56%. The paper also suggests that industries that are more opened to competition such as textiles industries present lower levels of market distortions compared with more protected industries with relatively little competition, such as the food industry. Besides, some evidence is provided showing that smaller firms face more extensive distortions compared to medium and larger firms. The main results of the paper are robust to an alternative estimation that uses a different methodological framework with a less extensive theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green development is the theme of the current era. Environmental regulation is an essential means to achieve environmental benefits and improve the total green factor productivity of manufacturing facing a series of problems brought by the development model of "high investment, high pollution, and high consumption." Appropriate environmental regulations need to be implemented to achieve economic and environmental harvest. Based on the panel data of 25 manufacturing industries from 2003 to 2016 in China, this thesis constructs a comprehensive indicator of environmental regulation and calculates the green total factor productivity, and its decomposition applied SBM directional distance function and Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index. Besides, this thesis conducts an empirical analysis of environmental regulation's effect on green productivity in China. The main conclusions showed that the green total factor productivity of China's manufacturing industry maintains an upward trend on the whole, and the growth of GTFP mainly depends on technological progress rather than the improvement of technical efficiency. The great differences have significant industrial heterogeneity characteristics of GTFP. A single threshold in the whole manufacturing industry, environmental regulation, and GTFP of industries are shown to be "U shape," and the left of the inflection point is not significant. Environmental regulations and GTFP of moderation and slightly pollution industries are "U shape," and there is no nonlinear relationship between environmental regulation intensity and GTFP in light pollution industries. Therefore, the government's optimal environmental regulation intensity should be implemented according to the industry's heterogeneity to prevent the phenomenon of "ineffective regulation;" it is necessary to pay attention to both technological innovation and technical efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is intended to investigate the Information and communication technology (ICT) support that affects small and medium enterprises' (SMEs) performances in Malaysia, which are mediated by the organisational capability. There were 296 surveys that were collected, and then it's done a reliability analysis, descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, multiple linear analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis. The results showed that the ICT support presented a positive relationship with SMEs performance by using the multiple regression analysis. Also the organisational capability became the full mediating role in the relationship between ICT support, and SMEs performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable economic growth relies on an increase in total factor productivity (TFP). To upgrade the core competitiveness and support the sustainable growth and high-quality development of China's economy, ascending TFP in China's manufacturing industry counts. This study analysed the impact of biased technological progress on TFP, which was estimated by using the relevant data of 27 subsectors of China's manufacturing industry from 1980 to 2019. The results revealed that from the early industrialisation period (1980–2000) to the mid-industrialisation period (2001–2012) and then to the middle and late industrialisation period (2013–2019), the mean value of TFP in China's manufacturing industry grew from 0.291 to 0.394 and then to 0.555, embodying a continuously upwards advancing tendency. Technological progress was capital biased from 1981 to 2011 and labour biased during the rest of the sample period. In addition, its direction was heterogeneous among various industries. To some extent, the growth of TFP has been hindered by biased technological progress and factor allocation. The per unit increase in them has led to 1.495 and 1.017 unit decreases in the TFP. Upon examining the factor efficiency and the factor structure, we found that the estimated coefficients of biased technological progress dropped to −1.516 and −1.719, preventing TFP from growing to a greater extent. Consequently, there is room for their optimisation in China's manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacturing industry represents the most important economic sector in Mexico, with an average contribution of 17% of the national GDP and a significant generation of formal employment. During the last years there has been a negative trend of the growth of labor productivity in this sector, which reflects obsolescence in the productive apparatus, so it is necessary to implement innovation processes as a fundamental element to face diminishing returns. The purpose of this research is to establish the relationship between innovation and labor productivity in Mexico's manufacturing industry. As a hypothesis, the existence of a positive correlation between innovation and labor productivity is considered. The existence of a relative but not determinant influence of the innovation in the labor productivity of the Mexican manufacturing industry was found, since the gross formation of fixed capital contributes more to it, and that the decreasing tendency of its levels of labor productivity is a reflection of structural failures and obsolescence in the productive apparatus, so that innovation represents a change in the technological trajectory for Mexican manufacturing activities, providing higher levels of labor productivity and competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is argued that structural change has been quite different in India as compared with China, with the former seeming to skip labor-intensive manufacturing while the latter fully exploiting this sector's potential for employment and growth. It is hypothesized that productivity growth in agriculture, particularly food staples, is a critical factor in explaining the differences in structural change. In China, rapid agricultural growth kept food cheap and thus labor inexpensive, fostering rapid growth in labor-intensive manufacturing. In India, sluggish agricultural growth and rising food costs meant that labor in India has become increasingly expensive and this has inhibited the development of labor-intensive manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of migrant workers on the output growth of 15 sub-industries of the manufacturing sector in Malaysia during the period 1990–2008. The paper seeks to answer the following critical questions: what is the impact of migrant workers on the output growth of the manufacturing sector, the leading sector of Malaysian economy? It is possible that migrant workers with different skill levels may have different impacts on output growth of such sector?Design/methodology/approach The paper employs three econometric techniques: mean group, dynamic fixed effect and the pooled mean group on extended form for Cobb–Douglas production function.Findings The overall findings suggest that due to the inflow of low skills of migrant workers, output growth in the manufacturing sectors is likely to witnesses a marginal decline in the long run.Originality/value The present study complements previous studies by providing a quantitative assessment of the impact of migrant workers on output growth in the manufacturing sector in Malaysia, which is not attempted in extant literature. More importantly, the analysis considers the probability that migrant workers with different skill levels may have different impacts on the growth of output in the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is great potential for the leather industry in Bangladesh to become one of the country's major foreign exchange earners, experts say. After readymade garments (RMG), productivity improvement can help to enrich profit of a leather products industry by minimizing excess work and developing a new method for particular operation. Nowadays, productivity improvement is a popular topic for any kinds of industry. Therefore, improving productivity is one of the main concerns of leather products industries. Lean manufacturing tools are most important tools that can help to increase productivity in leather products industry. In Bangladesh, few industries use these lean tools which can be proved as a real beneficial one. Hence, this study addresses the implementation of lean principles in a leather goods manufacturing industry in order to evaluate present process cycle efficiency (PCE), lead time and productivity prior to developing an improved strategy to bring the improved PCE, productivity and to reduce the lead time. By applying lean tools in the industry at the production line for bi-fold wallet, productivity has been improved by 85.42%. At the beginning state, the PCE was found 38.19% and after the implementation of lean tools, it would be 77.51% and lead time would also be reduced by 46.68% evaluated by takt time, bottleneck analysis, cause-effect analysis and Pareto analysis. The production flow was optimized by minimizing several non-value-added (NVD) activities such as bottlenecking, machine breakdown, queue time, waiting time, material handling time, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper studies the effect of local competition and trade exposure on firm productivity; • Exploits several rounds of economic census data for Mexico to estimate firm productivity and local market concentration and export competition; • Finds that a decline of 10 points in local HHI (a measure of concentration) of the manufacturing sector explains an increase by 1 percent in the total factor productivity (TFP) of revenue. • Shows that greater exposure to export competition offsets the negative effects of local concentration on productivity. • Explores differential responses of formal and informal firms when facing greater competition and exposure to international markets. To show how local market concentration affects firm productivity, we exploit a rare database for developing-country standards consisting of five rounds of the Mexican Manufacturing Census and geographically disaggregated data on sectoral exports. Our estimates show that a decline by 10 points in the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, a measure of market concentration, explains an increase by 1 percent in the total factor productivity (TFP) of revenue. We also find that greater exposure to trade offsets and, in most cases, reverses the negative effects of local concentration on productivity. Our heterogeneity analysis also shows that informal firms exhibit a higher probability of exiting the market if competitive pressure and exposure to international markets increase and that firms in the southern region of the country would benefit the most from higher competition and exposure to international markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first identify China's carbon-intensive industries (CIIs) by constructing a carbon intensive index taking both the scale and intensity of CO 2 emission into account. Then the strong version of Porter Hypothesis (PH), i.e., the positive effect of environmental regulation on total factor productivity (TFP) of China's CIIs is tested. In order to overcome the endogenous issue of model specification, two-stage least squares (2SLS) method is employed. The results indicate that there is a significant inverted U-shape relationship between environmental regulation intensity and the TFP of China's CIIs, demonstrating the inexistence of strong PH effect in a long run, and the impact of environmental regulation on CIIs is changing gradually from innovation offsets to compliance costs. In addition, optimal environmental regulation intensities for different CIIs are also studied according to their locations on the inverted U-shaped curve: the Production and Supply of Electric Power and Heat Power Industry has exceeded the optimal environmental regulation intensity, while the remaining CIIs have not reached their inflection points. Therefore, specific policy proposals should be formulated according to the different stages of environmental regulation in various industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing appeal for increased product variety and customization implies low-volume highly flexible production environments, consequently referring to a complex alignment between the organizational functions of production and sales. Considering a context of manufacturing through sales order and mass customization (MTSO + MC), the creation of specific technical lists for products can derail the timely release of a product to the market. This article describes contextual, structural, and procedural aspects associated to the implementation of a MTSO + MC environment to produce commercial air-conditioning equipment known as air handling unit. The equipment is high-aggregated value and has over 30 million different variants, sold in low volumes, generating high complexity for its sale specification and production processing. It becomes, therefore, a propitious scenario to discuss how mass customization and modular production concepts may be used to implement an information support system based on variant configuration, to enable demand and production management. The study was carried out with real data on a multi-national organization of the refrigeration industry. Implications to this organization and others interested in the theme include the following: waste reduction along the productive information management process, increased demand management effectiveness, and compatibility of project and production levels in the MTSO + MC context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of manufacturing equipment performance has been very important in production-related functions such as planning, scheduling, and maintenance. Nevertheless, low accuracy of performance measurements can mislead decision makers. In this study, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is considered as a performance indicator of manufacturing equipment. In practice, components of OEE may consist of uncertainty due to manual or semiautomatic measurement systems. As a consequence, true performance of equipment may be masked by the uncertainty of measurements. In this study, two types of uncertainty are considered in production speed and stoppage duration measurements, which are used in calculating OEE components. When the measurements have uncertainty due to use of linguistic terms or some minor stoppages, idling, or speed losses being ignored, fuzzy arithmetic is used as a method to handle uncertainty. In some low accuracy cases, best guess interval estimates of operators may better reflect the state than just providing a point estimate. For such cases, interval arithmetic is used as a method to handle uncertainty. Implementation of the methods are illustrated using two real-world examples and a software is provided for practitioners. Proposed methods help making better informed decisions using OEE under measurement uncertainty of production speed and stoppage durations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic surface roughness prediction during metal cutting operations plays an important role to enhance the productivity in manufacturing industries. Various machining parameters such as unwanted noises affect the surface roughness, whatever their effects have not been adequately quantified. In this study, a general dynamic surface roughness monitoring system in milling operations was developed. Based on the experimentally acquired data, the milling process of Al 7075 and St 52 parts was simulated. Cutting parameters (i.e., cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of cut), material type, coolant fluid, X and Z components of milling machine vibrations, and white noise were used as inputs. The original objective in the development of a dynamic monitoring system is to simulate wide ranges of machining conditions such as rough and finishing of several materials with and without cutting fluid. To achieve high accuracy of the resultant data, the full factorial design of experiment was used. To verify the accuracy of the proposed model, testing and recall/verification procedures have been carried out and results showed that the accuracy of 99.8 and 99.7 % were obtained for testing and recall processes. _: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, China's 'world factory' has undergone dramatic transformation in response to the changing business environment at global, national, local and firm levels. A rich body of literature has examined the spatial transformation of manufacturing firms from coastal to inland China, while little attention has been paid to the market shift engaged by export-oriented firms, particularly from exports towards China's domestic market. Taking electronics industry as a case, this study examines the process and trajectories of production relocation and market rebalancing of electronics firms during the period of 1998 and 2009. Drawing upon the global production networks (GPNs) framework, particularly the evolutionary strategic coupling, decoupling and recoupling dynamics, the study argues that China's 'world factory' has been restructured through divergent decoupling of electronics production and exports from coastal regions, for example, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) on the one hand, and selective recoupling with a small number of cities in inland regions and Yangtze River Delta. The spatial expansion of electronics exports and changing ratio of exports to sales outputs among various provinces elucidates the emerging attempts at developing domestic market-oriented production networks, yet with limited penetration to the domestic market. Through transition from structural coupling to selective recoupling, electronics firms like Foxconn, a Taiwan-based contract manufacturer for global lead firms, for example, Apple, have strategically leveraged among diverse regional production networks in China. The findings of the study could enrich the developing literature of GPNs, particularly the dynamic strategic coupling, decoupling and recoupling in the evolution of regional production networks in the changing global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US manufacturing policies increasingly steer resources toward the act of innovation. Emerging case-study evidence suggests that this innovation leads to manufacturing job growth. However, the case-study evidence from which this claim is assembled is incomplete and selective. Using regional-level industry-occupation data for US manufacturing sectors, we test the contribution of manufacturing innovation activities to production employment growth within US regions, for the 2000-2006 and 2006-2010 periods. While production employment continued to disperse from sites of historical manufacturing concentration over both time periods, innovation activities provided some advantages. From 2000 to 2006, regions with higher innovation concentrations in high-tech and medium-low technology industries, experienced slower rates of production employment decline. From 2006 to 2010, a period spanning the Great Recession, innovation activities were associated with reduced production job losses for industries of all technology levels. These results indicate that innovation has benefits beyond high-technology industries, but that those benefits are limited and selective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of research and development (R&D) on productivity by taking into account productivity spillovers. To this end, by using a sample of Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2004-2006 provided by the Xth UniCredit-Capitalia survey (2008), we have analyzed the role of R&D in firm productivity by using a spatial autoregressive model. In so doing, we have allowed the productivity of each firm to be affected by the productivity of nearby firms. Results show that R&D significantly affects Italian firm productivity and that productivity spillovers across firms matter. Moreover, productivity is found to be positively affected by intrasectoral R&D spillovers, while intersectoral R&D spillovers do not have a significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order for companies to succeed in terms of a market economy, rapidly growing competition and changing customer preferences, managers have to aim their activities mainly on optimization, cost reduction, increasing production flexibility and product quality. This paper deals with problems of economic costs of individual manufacturing operations. Optimization criterion addresses the minimization of production costs. In many cases, this can be done also by a maximization of productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a well-known tool used to assess the efficiency of homogenous units. In a DEA study, outputs are generally considered as the benefits gained and inputs are defined as the resources or the factors that may affect the performance of decision making units. However, if there is a necessity to deal with undesired factors, they are either defined as inputs or as undesired outputs in the DEA model. This study focuses on cement manufacturing facilities and aims to assess the effect of undesired outputs such as the amount of emissions that requires to be minimized and location of the facilities that needs to be maximized to avoid side effects of polluted air. This study considers eleven cement manufacturing facilities that are member of Cement Manufacturers’ Association of Turkey. DEA models are defined for common input and outputs available in the literature and for the proposed input, output, and undesired outputs. It is concluded that there is a significant difference in terms of consistency for the performances of cement manufacturing facilities when undesired factors are included and weights are assigned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies the effect of an increase in temperature and precipitation on the average output per worker in the Colombian manufacturing industry. In order to address this issue with rigor, a methodology has been developed using a theoretical model and an empirical estimation. The estimation of the empirical model was made with economic data from the Annual Survey of the Manufacturing Industry, the Monthly Manufacturing Sample and climate data from IDEAM. The results show evidence that temperature (- 0.3 % / + 1 %) has a negative effect and precipitation (+ 0.03 % / + 1 %) has a positive effect on average output per worker. The results build on previous literature arguing that worker's productivity is a channel through which climate and climate change affect economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practice, there is a great difference in advertising productiveness between an upstream manufacturer and a downstream retailer. Such a difference plays a key role in the choice of distribution channel for the upstream manufacturer. In this paper, we study the effect of this advertising productiveness difference on the distribution channel selection by a manufacturer that can sell products either indirectly through a retailer or directly by establishing its own channel. Our results indicate that with high initial goodwill or with advertising productiveness that is not significantly low, the manufacturer should develop its own channel; otherwise, the manufacturer prefers the indirect channel. We also show that cooperative advertising improves the profitability of the indirect channel compared with non-cooperative advertising. Furthermore, the efficiency of the cooperative advertising programme can be improved by incorporating a negotiated subsidy rate strategy. In addition, a manufacturer with greater bargaining power is more willing to select the indirect channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the total factor productivity (TFP) of the pulp and paper industry in three Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec) and in three United States (US) states that are contiguously located south of the border (Washington, Illinois, and Maine) over the period of 1971 to 2005. We find that the industry in the three Canadian provinces had much higher TFP growth rates in the era following the Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) signed in 1988. In terms of productivity level, this relative TFP surge allowed the industry in Ontario and British Columbia to move ahead of Illinois and Washington, respectively; however, Quebec trailed further Maine, which is the overall leader in the sample. Our results in this particular case reveal that the Canadian pulp and paper industry did not contribute to the overall Canada-US productivity gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of multinationals and reallocation in productivity growth in the Canadian manufacturing sector in 2001–2010. It finds that foreign-controlled enterprises were more important than domestically controlled enterprises in overall labour productivity growth for 2001–2010, but the contribution of foreign-controlled enterprises declined after 2006 as a result of an increase in the exits of large and productive foreign-controlled firms during that period. Restructuring in the manufacturing sector intensified after 2006. During 2006–2010, there was an increase in reallocation to enterprises that are more productive and an increase in reallocation of labour to industries that are more capital and intermediate input intensive. The effect of new enterprises displacing exitors also increased after 2006, mostly because of the increased effect of domestic entrants displacing exitors while the effect of foreign entry and exit declined. Offsetting those positive effects of reallocation on labour productivity growth is the negative effect of reallocation of labour to the firms with lower relative capital and intermediate intensities within the same industries. Finally, the article finds that the decline in labour productivity growth after 2006 was partly due to a decline in the productivity contribution of foreign-controlled enterprises as a result of an increase in the exits of large and productive foreign-controlled firms during that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este artículo se analiza la relación entre las decisiones de inversión, la intensidad de la inversión, los resultados de la innovación y la productividad del trabajo en una muestra de empresas de servicios y manufactureras del Perú en 2004, sobre la base de un modelo CDM ajustado (Crepon, Duguet y Mairesse, 1998). Algunos de los resultados obtenidos indican que el tamaño de la empresa es clave en la decisión de inversión. El tamaño de la empresa y la intensidad de la inversión también fueron determinantes fundamentales de la probabilidad de elaborar productos de innovación tecnológica y no tecnológica y de la productividad laboral de los sectores de servicios y manufacturas. Estos resultados sugieren que las políticas horizontales de ciencia, tecnología e innovación (CTI) que alientan a las empresas a incrementar la intensidad de la inversión en esas áreas pueden contribuir a aumentar la productividad del trabajo de las Armas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses World Bank's 2007 Regional Program for Enterprise Development survey data for Kenya to investigate the efficiency levels of Kenya's manufacturing sector and establish the sources of its variations across firms. Using a two-stage nonparametric approach, we establish the average technical efficiency of Kenya's manufacturing sector to be 68.3 percent with the least being 53 percent. Also, we find that 63 percent of the firms operated under increasing returns to scale, 35 percent of firms operate under decreasing returns and 2 percent under constant returns. Second stage results from Tobit estimation show that age of the enterprise and size enter the efficiency function negatively and their coefficients are significant. Technical efficiency is established to be concave with respect to these variables as well. The results also show that firms located in Nairobi are more efficient than their counterparts in Mombasa are. The implications of these findings for the design of policies that influence firm performance and location decisions are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several environmental concerns are not in favour of Greece's sustainable future growth while the implementation of differential environmental policies to appoint the Kyoto protocol's directives requires firms to balance their capital expenditures and operating costs to pollution abatement initiatives. This paper examines the impact of pollution abatement costs of Greek manufacturing over the period 1993-2006 using an industry-level balanced panel. Empirical results indicate that pollution abatement costs have no significant effect on the productivity of Greek manufacturing industries, on a yearly basis, providing no support on the Porter hypothesis stating that stricter environmental regulation triggers industrial productivity. However, significant changes are observed between energy intensive and energy consuming industries with pollution abatement efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study presents a model and estimates Mexico's regional total factor productivity (TFP) that accounts for the economic performance of the country since the 1980's. The findings raise a debate of Mexican productivity over time. One of them is that different measures of output and productivity, leads to different conclusions about productivity at the regional and national level in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable literature discussing the characteristics and importance of location-specific factors in the context of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), but very little literature linking location-specific factors to productivity. This study explores, for each location-specific factor, the relationship between the degree of local embeddedness and the labor productivity. We contribute to the body of literature on location-specific factors by arguing that market focuses play a pivotal role in determining the impact of local embeddedness on productivity. Based on their strategic choices, we categorize Taiwanese manufacturing multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries in China into two groups: the local-market-focus group and the export-market-focus group. The paper fits the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models to the export-market-focus group and the local-market-focus group separately. For these two groups, each local-embeddedness variable exerts different effect on labor productivity. Results also suggest that local-market-focus FDI is more affected by the host country's local business environment than is export-market-focus FDI. Although this study cannot represent all foreign companies in China, its dynamism offers a rich context in which to explore a deeper understanding of foreign companies' business activities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from nationwide surveys of provincial institutions and private manufacturing small medium enterprises, this study provided the first evidence of the impact of provincial institution quality and firms 'participation in and intensity of corrupt activities on firm productivity in Vietnam. We found that the bribe intensity instead of whether firms bribed state officials or not (measured by a dummy variable) has a negative effect on firm productivity when the endogeneity of corruption and unobservable characteristics are controlled for. This finding contrasts to a popular belief about a paradox for East Asian countries where corruption is positively associated with firm growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Theory predicts that trade liberalization should raise average total factor productivity (TFP) among manufacturing firms. However, this is a generic prediction and depends on maintained assumptions about industries, factor markets, and trade patterns that may not fit well for developing countries. Using firm-level data from Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania during the 1990s, a period of fairly rapid trade policy liberalization, we estimate productivity effects of trade. Our analysis confirms the well-known association between export intensity and higher productivity of the firm; however, the evidence for “learning by exporting,” or an increase in productivity associated with greater exports, is mixed, with several instances of negative average TFP growth among exporters. Our analysis indicates that such declines are likely attributable to the effects of lower external tariffs, because the firm-level productivity margin below which exporting is unprofitable moves down as the external tariff rate is reduced. We also find that sales to the rest of the world and sales to other African economies have differential effects on productivity growth rates, and that for country-specific reasons, these effects are not uniform. Controlling for initial productivity and the destination of exports (within or outside Africa) helps us understand why in some cases, export participation is associated with negative rates of TFP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results are given for roll briquetting of metallurgical lime. Experimental results are obtained in laboratory presses and industrial briquetting units. Dependences are obtained for briquette density on compaction pressure and process productivity with different roll briquetting parameters. Technology and equipment presented in the work for lime briquetting make it possible to prepare high quality briquettes for the metallurgical industry. Results obtained are used in developing production briquetting processes and planning equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research analyzes the Total Factor Productivity (tfp) change in the Chilean manufacturing sector through the calculation of the Malmquist index for the period 1998 - 2010. The Data Envelopment Analysis (dea), which allows the calculation of the Malmquist index as an estimator of the ptf change and the decomposition of productivity change into technological change and technical efficiency. The main results indicate that during the period, the ptf has diminished mainly because of the technological change while the technical efficiency remains constant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital economy is driving a new round of technological innovation and industrial transformation. This study estimates the level of China's digital economy by adopting the entropy approach and calculates the growth of green total factor productivity (GTFP) in China's manufacturing industry by applying the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen (LHM) indicator and considering by-production (BP) technology. The results show that China's digital economy and GTFP of manufacturing have been growing steadily. Manufacturing industry GTFP growth has been significantly enhanced by the digital economy, and digital economy levels in the surrounding areas have significant spatial spillover effects on green productivity growth. Moreover, the green growth of manufacturing industry in the western region is faster than that in the central and eastern regions. The digital economy's spillover effects on the manufacturing industry are more evident in the western region. The findings of this study offer empirical evidence on the role the digital economy plays in fostering sustainable growth in China's manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]