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Construction labour productivity (CLP) is affected by numerous variables made up of subjective and objective factors. Thus, CLP modelling and prediction are a complex task, leading to high computational cost and the risk of overfitting of data. This paper proposes a predictive model for CLP by integrating hybrid feature selection (HFS), as a combination of filter and wrapper methods, with principal component analysis (PCA). This developed HFS-PCA method reduces the dimensionality and complexity of CLP data and obtains better prediction performance by identifying the most predictive factors. Identified factors are utilized as inputs for various classification methods to predict CLP. Finally, prediction errors of the classification methods with and without using the proposed HFS-PCA method are compared, and the most accurate classification method is selected to develop the CLP predictive model. Experimental results show that using HFS-PCA for CLP prediction leads to better performances compared with past studies. Key words: construction labour productivity prediction, hybrid feature selection, principal component analysis, genetic algorithm, support vector machine, ReliefF algorithm La productivite du travail dans la construction (PTC) repose sur de nombreuses variables constituees de facteurs subjectifs et objectifs. Ainsi, la modelisation et la prediction de la PTC est une tache complexe, occasionnant un cout de calcul eleve et un risque de surapprentissage des donnees. Le present document propose un modele predictif pour la PTC en integrant la selection des caracteristiques hybrides (SCH), en tant que combinaison de methodes de filtrage et d'enveloppeur, avec l'analyse des composantes principales (ACP). Cette methode SCH-ACP developpee reduit la dimensionnalite et la complexite des donnees PTC et obtient une meilleure performance de prediction en identifiant les facteurs les plus predictifs. Les facteurs identifies sont utilises comme intrants pour diverses methodes de classification afin de predire la PTC. Enfin, on compare l'erreur de prediction des methodes de classification avec et sans l'utilisation de la methode SCH-ACP proposee, et on choisit la methode de classification la plus precise pour elaborer le modele predictif de PTC. Les resultats experimentaux montrent que l'utilisation de la SCH-ACP pour la prediction de la PTC conduit a de meilleures performances par rapport aux etudes anterieures. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles : prediction de la productivite du travail de construction, selection de caracteristiques hybrides (SCH), analyse des composantes principales (ACP), algorithme genetique, machine a vecteurs de support, algorithme ReliefF, 1. Introduction As the construction industry accounts for the highest share of employment and labour costs comprise the majority of overall project costs in many countries (Heravi and Eslamdoost 2015), [...]

This paper provides new evidence about the link between firm-level total factor productivity (TFP) and 1 stock returns. We estimate firm-level TFP and show that it is strongly related to several firm characteristics such as size, the book-to-market ratio, investment, and hiring rate. Low productivity firms earn a significant premium over high productivity firms in the following year, and this premium is countercyclical. We show that a production-based asset pricing model calibrated to match the cross section of measured firm-level TFPs can replicate the empirical relationship between TFP, many firm characteristics, and stock returns. Our results offer an explanation as to how these firm characteristics rationally predict returns. Keywords: firm-level productivity; cross section of returns History: Received February 4, 2013; accepted July 22, 2013, by Wei Jiang, finance. Published online in Articles in Advance April 16, 2014., 1. Introduction Empirical research in finance has documented that many firm characteristics, such as size, book-to-market ratio, investment, and hiring behavior of firms, forecast future stock returns. (1) Recently, a [...]

In horizontal mergers, concentration is often measured with the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI). This index yields the price-cost margins in Cournot competition. In many modern merger cases, both buyers and sellers have market power, and indeed, the buyers and sellers may be the same set of firms. In such cases, the HHI is inapplicable. We develop an alternative theory that has similar data requirements as the HHI, applies to intermediate good industries with arbitrary numbers of firms on both sides, and specializes to the HHI when buyers' have no market power. The more inelastic is the downstream demand, the more captive production and consumption (not traded in the intermediate market) affects price-cost margins. The analysis is applied to the merger of the gasoline refining and retail assets of Exxon and Mobil in the western United States. (JEL L13, L41), I. INTRODUCTION The seven largest refiners of gasoline on the west coast of the United States account for over 95% of the production of California Air Resources Board (CARB) certified [...]

An estimable structural model of the joint export-investment decision is presented. Firms invest in research and development (R&D) and physical capital which can affect future productivity for the firm in this model. This model provides equations for the policy functions of R&D investment, physical investment, and exporting decisions.

Predictions of a standard heterogeneous firm model regarding the exports of firms across markets in response to a particular trade policy is examined through data from Bangladesh. It is argued that firm- and market-specific demand shocks help explain a number of these anomalies in the prediction that are not consistent with the data.

A theoretical model and an empirical test of the economic behavior of oligarchs is presented. This model predicts that oligarchs will tend to invest in productivity enhancing projects. The model is tested using a unique data set of around 2000 Ukrainian open joint stock companies.

A comparison is presented between Cournot and Bertrand duopoly for product substitutability. Collusion was found to be more easily sustained under Cournot duopoly when marginal costs are adequately increasing in output.

In this paper, we examine empirically the predictions of a range of theoretical models which give a prominent role to technology shocks in explaining business cycles. To this end, we estimate (4-digit SIC) industry-level VAR models for US manufacturing using real output, the real wage and utilization corrected measures of technology and labor input. Our results support both sticky-wage DGE and RBC models over sticky-price DGE models. Moreover, they cast some doubt on the importance of technology shocks as propulsive mechanism for business cycles at the industry level. JEL classification: E32; O47 Keywords: Real business cycles; Sticky-price DGE models; Technology shocks; Total factor productivity

Definition of the tradability of goods, data disaggregation, possible heterogeneity for transition nations, and price regulation in services are examined in relation to Estonian trade and natural resources. Findings indicate that productivity correlates strongly to relative prices only under specific conditions; these are elaborated.

The performance of the commercial branches of a large Canadian bank using data envelopment analysis is evaluated. Two production models were considered in the evaluation, such that one looking directly at resource usage is most useful to the branch manager while the other, incorporating financial results, is more geared towards senior management.

A distance function is estimated and producer shadow prices are derived for SO2 and PM-10 emissions. The shadow prices are used to adjust a traditional measure of total factor productivity growth in order to account for the reallocation of inputs from production of the marketed output to air pollution abatement activities.

A comparison of the Malmquist and Luenberger productivity indices shows that the Malmquist method overestimates changes in productivity, producing measures nearly double that produced by the Luenberger method. Data from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 1974 and 1997 are used as illustration.

A nonlinear model explores the relationship between increasing productivity and unemployment through business cycles.

A small deviation in one variable can engender significant convergence rate variation in a one-sector production growth model.

I present a model economy where policy uncertainty creates short-term bias in investment and leads to a higher capital price and lower long-run investment and output. I conduct a calibration exercise using a set of industry-level investment data across countries. Between the lowest-income and the highest-income countries, policy uncertainty can account for capital price and investment-level differences by a factor of about 3 and for the output-level difference by a factor of about 2.

Wen Lea Pearn is a Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Management Department, National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC. He received his Ph.D. degree in Operations Research from Maryland University, College Park. He worked for the Switch Network Control and Process Quality Centers at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He has published and presented research papers in the areas of networks, scheduling, and process capability. Shu-Hsing Chung is a Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Management Department, National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC. She received a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, in 1986. Her research interests include production planning, scheduling, system simulation, and production planning of IC manufacturing. She has published and presented research papers in the areas of flexible manufacturing system planning, scheduling, and cell formation. Ming-Hsien Yang is a graduate of the Industrial Engineering and Management Department, National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC. He received an M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from the National Chiao-Tung University. He is a Lecturer in the Industrial Engineering and Management Department, National Lien Ho Institute of Technology, Miao Li, Taiwan, ROC. His research interests include production planning and scheduling., ********** W.L. Pearn (*) The Wafer Probing Scheduling Problem (WPSP) is a practical generalization of the parallel-machine scheduling problem, which has many real-world applications, particularly, in the Integrated Circuit (IC) [...]

Linking United States and Canada industrial production indexes allows improved forecasting, more stability, and increased synchronization between the two series.

The correlations between output and productivity and between hours worked and productivity can be clarified by removing labor externalities. Results indicate that hours of work vary more than productivity and that smaller shocks are needed to affect the model with larger externalities.

Newer economic techniques are used to illustrate a bidirectitonal relationship between price level and productivity when factors such as money and cycle breaks are removed from the equation, using data on Greece from 1962-1997. Reduction of inflation can result in increased productivity in the abscence of other determining factors.

The need for reconstruction in economic development in industrial nations is discussed in detail. The large rates of productivity and economic growth in Europe and Japan in the 1950s are examples.

An industrial competitiveness model was developed. The proposed model reflects the overall productivity measure and position of an industrial firm as compared to its competitors in terms of production capabilities, distribution systems, marketing competence, purchasing skill, and financial superiority. In addition, it shows how industrial competitiveness and productivity of a firm is analytically related to one another.

The productivity of a firm is analyzed in terms of the maximal level of output that can be achieved for a given combination of inputs. This is made possible by estimating the monotone and concave frontier functions using an improved bias-corrected estimator. The bias-corrected estimator is derived by obtaining the asymptotic distribution of the data envelopment analysis estimator and its finite-sample performance is assessed in a simulation study. The proposed estimator is based on consistent estimation of the density function and the second derivative of the production frontier to define the economic efficiency of a firm., 1. INTRODUCTION Suppose that ([X.sub.1], [Y.sub.1]), ..., ([X.sub.n], [Y.sub.n]) are iid with a density f in [R.sup.2]. The support of f is assumed to be of the form [Psi] = [...]

Byline: Richard A. Jenner (1) Abstract: This paper used concepts from chaotical dynamic systems, information theory, and cybernetics to develop a model that depicts a Schumpeterian process through which entrepreneurs search for new combinations of both products and production processes that result in increased productivity and growth. The model provides the basis for an alternative conceptual framework for conducting research into the causes of the productivity slowdown that began in the United States in the early 1970s and continued until recently. Author Affiliation: (1) College of Business, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, 94132, California, U.S.A. Article History: Registration Date: 06/10/2004

Our model endogenizes the share of public sector employment in a neoclassical growth model. Under the assumptions that public sector production is labor intensive and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is less than one, the public share of employment is shown to decline with a rise in capital per effective worker. Our theory predicts that periods of high productivity growth are associated with a rising trend of the public share of employment. This prediction conforms well with U.S. experience from 1950-1995., 1. Introduction There is broad recognition that, with reference to U.S. data, there has been a rise in the share of public sector employment over the past several decades. [See, […]

An analysis of Okun's model of the empirical relationship between unemployment and output showed that Okun's coefficient can be interpreted as the cointegration coefficient between the two variables. This is due to the action of the Beveridge and Nelson decomposition on the variables which would allows the data to follow a time series analysis of macroeconomic variables. This is true only if potential output and unemployment are treated as permanent or trend components of the variables in the decomposition treatment.

This paper tests for the presence of output mean and variance nonlinearities in international industrial production and UK and US sectoral production growth rates using ARMA-GQARCH, bilinear (BL) and joint BL-GQARCH models. ARMA-GQARCH models confirm the presence of asymmetric variance effects in Italian, UK and US industrial production and in all sectors other than US nondurables, and such that the conditional variance of output is increased following negative shocks. BL models are identified for German, Italian and US industrial production and US manufacturing, while BL-GQARCH models of joint nonlinearity in both conditional mean and conditional variance are also found to hold for US industrial production and manufacturing. Moreover, with the exception of Italy, all BL and BL-QARCH models provide superior out-of-sample mean forecasts relative to forecasts from both naive models and models of the ARMA-GQARCH class.

The total factor productivity (TFP) growth of regulation shows a negative effect in terms of overall impact. An analysis of the US commerical banking industry during 1946 to 1995 showed that the implementation of several regulatory acts has resulted to a downward trend in total factor productivity (TFP) growth. A negative relationship was also established between TFP growth and population and real gross domestic product growth. The positive relationship betwenn TFP growth and technological investment is found to be not strongly supported.

Open Space Technology is an initiative founded in 1995 to aid small- and large scale membership organizations address a wide variety of management and production issues. Inspired by the concept of elegance and style of the Balamah village in West Africa, Open Space had its first rigorous application in DuPont, where the issue of handling a large-scale conference was tackled. Recently, a number of work groups are employing Open Space in an attempt to improve their production efficiency.

A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of Indonesia is developed in which total factor productivity growth in manufacturing is endogenously determined. Productivity growth is conceptualized as human and social capital accumulation, mediated by learning and institutional development stimulated by the trade regime. These factors are modeled as externalities determined by export growth and capital equipment imports. The model is used to analyze the gains deriving from the externalities, and subsidies that amplify their effects, leading Indonesia to acquire Korea-like institutions sooner. The growth and fiscal implications of such counterfactual simulations are analyzed in a realistic general equilibrium framework with a fully articulated public sector. Key words - Asia, Indonesia, productivity simulation, trade externalities, human and social capital

Byline: G. E. Battese (1), A. N. Rambaldi (1), G. H. Wan (2) Keywords: stochastic frontier production function; production risks; technical efficiency Abstract: This paper considers a stochastic frontier production function which has additive, heteroscedastic error structure. The model allows for negative or positive marginal production risks of inputs, as originally proposed by Just and Pope (1978). The technical efficiencies of individual firms in the sample are a function of the levels of the input variables in the stochastic frontier, in addition to the technical inefficiency effects. These are two features of the model which are not exhibited by the commonly used stochastic frontiers with multiplicative error structures. An empirical application is presented using cross-sectional data on Ethiopian peasant farmers. The null hypothesis of no technical inefficiencies of production among these farmers is accepted. Further, the flexible risk models do not fit the data on peasant farmers as well as the traditional stochastic frontier model with multiplicative error structure. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Econometrics, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351, Australia (2) Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Sydney (A04), NSW, 2006, Australia Article History: Registration Date: 29/09/2004

Introduction Elsewhere (van Tuijl, 1997) the ProMES method (Pritchard, 1990; 1995) is described as a method for the development of control loops for self-management: 'accepted control loops'. The model of [...]

The single-vendor single-buyer integrated production-inventory model was utilized to demonstrate the efficiency of a more general class of shipment policy to produce lower cost solutions. A general type of policy for single-vendor multi-buyer problem can be utilized to deal with successive shipments with production batches that increase by a factor that is equal to the production rate. However, the generalized policy was not optimal based on analysis utilizing the single-vendor single-buyer integrated production-inventory model.

The time series qualities and historical attributes of UK industrial output from 1923-1992 are established and analysed. Results indicate that production seems to have followed a segmented trend stationary process since 1923. The UK industry appears to have suffered a major historical discontinuity in the 1970s. The major shift in production trend occurred at the time of the 1973 oil shock. An industrial crash rather than a trend change appears to have followed in 1979.

Byline: Subhash C. Ray (1), Xiaowen Hu (1) Keywords: size efficiency; industry restructuring; integer programming Abstract: In nonparametric analysis of production efficiency, the focus of attention is typically on the individual firm. In this article, we evaluate efficiency in resource utilization at the industry level. We propose an integer programming model to measure the extent of input saving possible if the observed output level of the industry is allocated to an optimal number of identical firms. This approach is applied to data for U.S. airlines covering the period 1970--84. Our results confirm that there were too few airlines prior to deregulation and suggest that there were too many firms during the early years of the post-deregulation era. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Economics, U-63, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269-1063 Article History: Registration Date: 29/09/2004

Technology spillovers from high-productivity countries in the North allow low-productivity countries in the South to improve productivity in high-tech sectors relatively easy. However, the South's share in world goods markets for high-tech products is relatively low, which reduces opportunities for learning by doing. Our simple Ricardian endogenous growth model shows how the balance between toughness of competition in trade and the strength of North-South spillovers determines whether productivity levels diverge, partially converge or fully converge in the long run. If convergence prevails, the North is confronted with declining employment in high-tech sectors. Temporary (trade) policy measures can turn a diverging economy into a converging one. Keywords: Endogenous learning; Asymmetric knowledge spillovers; Infant industry; Convergence; Technology gap

A sticky price model is shown to be consistent with certain facts which focus on the correlation of prices, hours and output. The model shows that unexpected movements in prices, hours and output are positively correlated. The revisions in output growth and hours are negatively related with the revisions in price growth. Moreover, the revisions in output growth over the next period are positively related with the price revisions.

A model is developed to study the productivity of public infrastructure capital at general equilibrium conditions. The model assumes that public infrastructure's effect on aggregate output and manufacturing is indeterminate. On the other hand, it can change intermediate prices, factor prices and the allocation of factors across sectors. Regression estimates validate the model's assumption regarding aggregate output. However, the results also indicate a relationship between public infrastructure capital and manufacturing.

We test the R&D spillover hypothesis of the endogenous growth literature using panel data for a sample of private manufacturing firms in India over the period 1975-1986. We estimate an extended production function that includes the firm's own R&D capital stock and the spillover effect of the industry-wide R&D capital stock as inputs, as well as physical capital and labor hours. We specify models which eliminate three sources of estimation bias and flawed hypothesis tests: serially correlated errors, unobserved heterogeneity due to omitted factors of production, and endogenous determination of value-added and input levels. Several specification tests are used to select a well-behaved model. The final parameter estimates show evidence for the R & D spillover hypothesis in all industries. JEL classification: O32; D24; L6 Keywords: R&D spillover; Firm level R&D; Firm level productivity

Traditionally, raising the level of technology is considered the most effective way to improve productivity. Nevertheless, without the support of sound management systems, the contribution of technology to productivity is limited. In a sample of fifteen machinery firms, this paper calculates three indices for automation technology, production management, and productivity, respectively, to represent their levels of achievement. By using technology and management as the explanatory variables, a piecewise linear productivity frontier is constructed by applying a data envelopment analysis approach. At a given combination of the levels of technology and management, a firm may not be able to achieve the expected maximum productivity due to inefficient utilization of the input factors. One approach, the efficiency approach, for improving productivity which does not require the consumption of extra resources is to efficiently utilize the input factors. Another approach, the effectiveness approach, is to adjust the levels of technology and management toward the best combination to accomplish the highest productivity. Based on the productivity frontier constructed from the surveyed firms, the two approaches for improving productivity are discussed. Key words - data envelopment analysis, effectiveness, efficiency, productivity

Export share requirement and domestic content protection laws affect a multinational firm's capital investments as it faces production uncertainty. This impact is observed for the host country under absent uncertainty for itself and the home country, uncertainty in the home country and uncertainty in the host country. However, a similar effect is observed for the home country when a capital investment choice is required prior to the resolution of production uncertainty.

A study was conducted to create a solution process for simultaneous determination of economic batch sizes for end products and their raw materials and also for economic timing between procurement periods. In addition, production policy on integrated total cost is also examined. Results show that the total system must be considered in planning production and inventory policies and not independent and dependent demand cases.

Productivity has become an important issue for almost all organizations. Techniques for quantifying organizational productivity usually evaluate efficiency of individuals, groups and other collective entities. A new productivity model which takes more than inputs and outputs into account is presented. The new model places emphasis on efficiency as the prime factor in improving productivity., In the last ten years, much has been written about productivity. 'Falling' productivity has been blamed for the loss of U.S. leadership and competitiveness in the global arena. At least [...]