Showing papers on "Physical capital published in 2003"

Intellectual capital and traditional measures of corporate performance

Abstract: The principal purpose of this study is to investigate the association between the efficiency of value added (VA) by the major components of a firm's resource base (physical capital, human capital and structural capital) and three traditional dimensions of corporate performance: profitability, productivity, and market valuation. Data are drawn from a sample of 75 publicly traded firms from South Africa from business sectors heavily reliant on intellectual capital. Empirical analysis is conducted using correlation and linear multiple regression analysis. Findings from the empirical analysis indicate that associations between the efficiency of VA by a firm's major resource bases and profitability, productivity and market valuation are generally limited and mixed. Overall, the empirical findings suggest that physical capital remains the most significant underlying resource of corporate performance in South Africa despite efforts to increase the nation's intellectual capital base.

Entrepreneurship Capital and Economic Performance

Abstract: The neoclassical model of the production function, as applied by Robert Solow to build the neoclassical model of growth, linked labour and capital to output. More recently, Romer and others have expanded the model to include measures of knowledge capital. In this Paper we introduce a new factor, entrepreneurship capital, and link it to output in the context of a production function model. This Paper explains what is meant by entrepreneurship capital and why it should influence economic output. A production function model including several different measures of entrepreneurship capital is then estimated for German regions. The results indicate that entrepreneurship capital is a significant and important factor shaping output and productivity. These results suggest a new direction for policy that focuses on instruments to enhance entrepreneurship capital.

Local Social Capital and Entrepreneurship

Abstract: We aim to contribute to the analysis of the role that spacebound social capital plays in local/regional entrepreneurship. We compare social capital with other forms of capital. The conclusion is that in the main, social capital can be analyzed in the same way as other capital but it has some important special attributes. With these attributes as starting point we sketch an outline model of how the spatially-defined producer surplus and consumer surplus form a place surplus, and of the role played by social capital in the creation of the producer surplus. A "rereading" of Schumpeter shows that he was aware of several aspects of what we denominate entrepreneurship-inhibiting and facilitating aspects of social capital. Finally, we discuss some formal economic modeling approaches to the theoretical relationship between social capital and entrepreneurship.

“Class matters”: human and social capital in the entrepreneurial process

Abstract: This paper explores how entrepreneurial family background impacts upon the development of social and human capital resources and demonstrates how these affect the profitability and growth of new enterprise. Through a qualitative approach, we found that those entrepreneurs from higher socio-economic groupings had high endowments of human capital. Significantly, their businesses were characterised by greater profitability and growth potential. Those entrepreneurs also had social networks characterised by high endowments of human capital. Consequently entrepreneurs from higher socio-economic class had access to highly effective business support, and these networks provided a ‘platform’ from which opportunities could be both recognised and realised.

Specifying Human Capital

Abstract: A review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empiricalgrowth research - including adult literacy rates, school enrollmentratios, and average years of schooling of the working-age population -reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied. The simple use ofthe most common proxy, average years of schooling, misspecifies therelationship between education and the stock of human capital. Based onhuman capital theory, the specification of human capital is extended toallow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in thequality of a year of education. The different specifications give riseto hugely differing measures of the stock of human capital acrosscountries, and development-accounting results show that misspecifiedhuman capital measures can lead to severe underestimation of thedevelopment effect of human capital.

Specifying human capital

Abstract: A review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empiricalgrowth research - including adult literacy rates, school enrollmentratios, and average years of schooling of the working-age population -reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied. The simple use ofthe most common proxy, average years of schooling, misspecifies therelationship between education and the stock of human capital. Based onhuman capital theory, the specification of human capital is extended toallow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in thequality of a year of education. The different specifications give riseto hugely differing measures of the stock of human capital acrosscountries, and development-accounting results show that misspecifiedhuman capital measures can lead to severe underestimation of thedevelopment effect of human capital.

Public Finances and Long-Term Growth in Europe - Evidence from a Panel Data Analysis

Abstract: In Lisbon the European Council proclaimed a European growth strategy. It considers an average economic "growth rate of around 3 percent as a realistic prospect for the coming years" and assigns public finances an important role in the process of achieving this goal. This paper addresses the question whether we can find empirical evidence for European countries that public finance reform affects trend growth. Focusing on time series patterns, we investigate whether there have been persistent shifts or trends in economic growth and fiscal variables over the last 40 years. In addition, we estimate a distributed lag model, which 1) indicates that government consumption and transfers negatively affect growth rates of GDP per capita over the business cycle, while public investment has a positive impact, and 2) provides robust evidence that distortionary taxation affects growth in the medium-term through its impact on the accumulation of private physical capital.

The Long-run Economic Costs of AIDS: Theory and an Application to South Africa ⁄

Abstract: Most existing estimates of the macroeconomic costs of AIDS, as measured by the reduction in the growth rate of gross domestic product, are modest. For Africa-the continent where the epidemic has hit the hardest-they range between 0.3 and 1.5 percent annually. The reason is that these estimates are based on an underlying assumption that the main effect of increased mortality is to relieve pressure on existing land and physical capital so that output per head is little affected. The authors argue that this emphasis is misplaced and that, with a more plausible view of how the economy functions over the long run, the economic costs of AIDS are almost certain to be much higher. Not only does AIDS destroy existing human capital, but by killing mostly young adults, it also weakens the mechanism through which knowledge and abilities are transmitted from one generation to the next. The children of AIDS victims will be left without one or both parents to love, raise, and educate them. The model yields the following results. In the absence of AIDS, the counterfactual benchmark, there is modest growth, with universal and complete education attained within three generations. But if nothing is done to combat the epidemic, a complete economic collapse will occur within three generations. With optimal spending on combating the disease, and if there is pooling, growth is maintained, albeit at a somewhat slower rate than in the benchmark case in the absence of AIDS. If pooling breaks down and is replaced by nuclear families, growth will be slower still. Indeed, if school attendance subsidies are not possible, growth will be distinctly sluggish. In all three cases, the additional fiscal burden of intervention will be large, which reinforces the gravity of the findings.

Labor and the Market Value of the Firm

Abstract: What role does labor play in firms' market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction being a crucial determinant of market value behavior. We use aggregate U.S. corporate sector data to estimate firms' optimal hiring and investment decisions and the consequences for firms' value. We then decompose this value, thereby quantifying the link between firms' market value and gross hiring flows, employment, gross investment and physical capital. We find that a conventional specification - quadratic adjustment costs for capital and no hiring costs - performs poorly. Rather hiring and investment flows, unlike employment and capital stocks, are volatile and both are essential to account for market volatility. A key result is that firms' value embodies the value of hiring and investment over and above the capital stock.

Determinants of Technical Efficiency in Small Firms

Abstract: There is evidence that small firms are less productive than larger ones. This phenomenon could be explained by several factors. In this paper, using plant survey data and non-parametric deterministic frontier methodology, we explore what factors can explain the observed differences in technical efficiency. In the case of Chilean manufacturing firms, we found that efficiency is positively associated with the experience of workers, modernization of physical capital and innovation in products. In contrast, other variables such as outward orientation, owner education and participation in some public programs do not affect the efficiency of the firms.

How corruption affects persistent capital flows

Abstract: Corruption is known to reduce the ratio of investment to GDP. This study breaks down investment into domestic savings and net capital inflows. A significant impact of corruption exists only for the latter variable because the first variable is distorted by general equilibrium repercussions. An increase in Colombia’s level of integrity to that of the United Kingdom is found to increase net annual capital inflows by 3 percent of GDP. Decomposing this impact reveals that bureaucratic quality, civil liberty and government stability are irrelevant, but that a country’s law and order tradition is a crucial sub-component for attracting capital.

Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure

Abstract: Empirical examinations of capital structure have led some to conclude that firms are underlevered. Implicit in this argument and much of the empirical work on leverage is the assumption that the availability of incremental capital depends solely on the risk of the firm's cash flows and characteristics of the firm. However, the same market frictions that make capital structure relevant suggest that firms may be rationed by lenders, leading some firms to appear to be under-levered relative to unconstrained firms. We examine this theory, arguing that the same characteristics that may be associated with firms being rationed by the debt markets are also associated with financial intermediaries, opposed to bond markets, being the source of a firm's debt capital. We find that firms have significantly different leverage ratios based on whether they have access to public bond markets as measured by the firm having a debt rating. Although firms with a debt rating are fundamentally different, these differences do not explain our findings. Even after controlling for the firm characteristics previously found to determine observed capital structure and the possible endogeneity of having a bond rating, we find that firms which are able to raise debt from public markets have 35 percent more debt.

Human Capital Risk and Economic Growth

Abstract: This paper develops a tractable incomplete-markets model of economic growth in which households invest in risk-free physical capital and risky human capital. The paper shows that a reduction in uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk decreases physical capital investment, but increases human capital investment, growth, and welfare. A quantitative analysis based on a calibrated version of the model reveals that these effects are substantial and of the same order of magnitude as the effects of distortionary income taxation. The analysis further suggests that government-sponsored severance payments to displaced workers increase growth and welfare even if these payments have to be e nanced through distortionary income taxation.

The Impact of Intelligence and Institutional Improvements on Economic Growth

Abstract: Standard indicators of human capital endowment ? like literacy, school enrollment ratios or years of schooling ? suffer from a number of defects. They are crude. Mostly, they refer to input rather than output measures of human capital formation. Occasionally, they produce implausible effects. They are not robustly significant determinants of growth. Here, they are replaced by average intelligence. This variable consistently outperforms the other human capital indicators in spite of suffering from severe defects of its own. The immediate impact of institutional improvements, i.e., more government tolerance of private enterprise or economic freedom, on growth it is in the same order of magnitude as intelligence effects are.

New Estimates of Government Net Capital Stocks for 22 OECD Countries 1960-2001

Abstract: The issue of whether government capital is productive has received a great deal of attention recently, yet empirical analyses of public capital productivity have generally been limited to the official capital stock estimates available in a small sample of countries. Alternatively, many researchers have investigated the output effects of public investment-recognizing that investment may be a poor proxy for the corresponding capital stock. This paper attempts to overcome the data shortage by providing internationally comparable capital stock estimates for 22 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Copyright 2006, International Monetary Fund

Trade Liberalization and Growth: New Evidence

Abstract: This paper revisits the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic integration and economic growth. First, we present an updated dataset of openness indicators and trade liberalization dates for a wide cross-section of countries in the 1990s. Second, we extend the Sachs and Warner (1995) study of the relationship between trade openness and economic growth to the 1990s, discussing recent criticisms of their measurement and estimation framework. Our results suggest that the cross-sectional findings of Sachs and Warner are sensitive to the period under consideration. In particular, an updated version of their dichotomous trade policy openness indicator does not enter significantly in growth regressions for the 1990s. Third, and most importantly, we present new evidence on the time paths of economic growth, physical capital investment and openness around episodes of trade policy liberalization. In sharp contrast to our cross-sectional results, we find that liberalization has, on average, robust positive effects on growth, openness and investment rates within countries. We illustrate these large sample findings with detailed case studies in a subsample of representative countries.

Social Capital, Economic Growth and Quality of Government: The Causal Mechanism

Abstract: (2003). Social Capital, Economic Growth and Quality of Government: The Causal Mechanism. New Political Economy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 49-71.

Wages and Employment in the United States and Germany: What Explains the Differences?

Abstract: Over the last 20 years the wage-education relationships in the United States and Germany have evolved very differently, while the education compositions of employment have evolved in a parallel fashion. In this paper, we show how these patterns shed light on the nature of recent technological change and highlight the importance of taking into account movements in the ratio of human capital to physical capital when examining changes in the returns to skill. Our analysis indicates that the United States could have prevented the increase in wage inequality observed in the 1980's by a faster accumulation of physical capital.

Building and destroying social capital: The case of cooperative movements in Denmark and Poland

Abstract: Social capital, measured as the level of trustamong people, may be regarded as a newproduction factor alongside the traditionalones of human and physical capital. Withappropriate levels of social capital,monitoring and transaction costs can be savedand thus economic growth stimulated. Vialinking social capital to rural development andcomparing the cases of agricultural cooperativemovements in Denmark and Poland, this paperidentifies possible roots of building socialcapital and suggests that social capital wasbuilt through a lengthy process in bothcountries during the 19th century. However,the comparison of the present level of socialcapital indicates that the level of socialcapital is significantly higher in Denmark thanin Poland. The paper concludes that the reasonfor this difference is the fact that theoriginal accumulation of social capital inPoland was destroyed by the communist regime.

Proposals for the measurement of individual social capital

Abstract: During the last fifteen years, the idea of social capital has been elaborated in the social sciences as a promising new look at sociological phenomena and a theory that shows how and why relational networks are important for explaining various individual outcome measures. Various unresolved issues and ambiguities still remain, however. One of these is the measurement of social capital (Flap 1999, Lin 1999a, 2001). Although many studies have focused on the distributions and specific consequences of social capital, similar theoretical elements have been operationalized into many different measurement methods. Standardization in measuring social capital appears to be still far away (Flap 1999, Snijders 1999, Lin 1999a, 2001). There has been an abundance of ad hoc measures, often derived from data that were not specifically designed for the measurement of social capital but that happened to be available for analyses. This has made thorough and specific testing of social capital theory difficult because of lack of possibilities for structural comparisons.

Trade Liberalization and Growth: New Evidence

Abstract: This paper revisits the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic integration and economic growth. First, we present an updated dataset of openness indicators and trade liberalization dates for a wide cross-section of countries in the 1990s. Second, we extend the Sachs and Warner (1995) study of the relationship between trade openness and economic growth to the 1990s, discussing recent criticisms of their measurement and estimation framework. Our results suggest that the cross-sectional findings of Sachs and Warner are sensitive to the period under consideration. In particular, an updated version of their dichotomous trade policy openness indicator does not enter significantly in growth regressions for the 1990s. Third, and most importantly, we present new evidence on the time paths of economic growth, physical capital investment and openness around episodes of trade policy liberalization. In sharp contrast to our cross-sectional results, we find that liberalization has, on average, robust positive effects on growth, openness and investment rates within countries. We illustrate these large sample findings with detailed case studies in a subsample of representative countries.

Technological Change and the Stock Market

Abstract: Tobin's average q has usually been well above 1, but fell below 1 during 1974-1984. Our model explains this pattern and reconciles it with unchanging aggregate investment. The stock market value in the numerator of q reflects ownership of physical capital and knowledge, but the denominator measures just physical capital. Therefore, q is usually above 1. Periodic arrivals of important new technologies, such as the microprocessor in the 1970's, suddenly render old knowledge and capital obsolete, causing the stock market to drop. National accounts measures of physical capital miss this rapid obsolescence. Then q appears to drop below 1. (JEL E44, O3, O41)

Growth, capital shares, and a new perspective on production functions

Abstract: Standard growth theory implies that steady-state growth in the presence of exponential declines in the prices of computers and other capital equipment requires a Cobb-Douglas production function. Conventional wisdom holds that capital shares are relatively constant, so that the Cobb-Douglas approach might be a good way to model growth. Unfortunately, this conventional wisdom is misguided. Capital shares exhibit substantial trends and fluctuations in many countries and in many industries. Taken together, these facts represent a puzzle for growth theory. This paper resolves the puzzle by (a) presenting a production function that exhibits a short-run elasticity of substitution between capital and labor that is less than one and a long-run elasticity that is equal to one, and (b) providing microfoundations for why the production function might take the Cobb-Douglas form in the long run.