Taking services seriously: how policy can stimulate the 'hidden innovation' in the UK’s services economy

Policy could have an important role in stimulating innovation in services. However, policymakers have lacked robust evidence showing how these sectors innovate. Drawing on a survey of more than 16,000 firms, this research reveals the high levels of ‘hidden innovation’ in some services sectors, especially in how they develop new business models and exploit technology. But the research also reveals that innovation is confined to a minority of service firms, and that many lack the skilled personnel or intelligence on markets and technology that would enable them to become more innovative. Because of their dominance in the economy, improved performance by the UK’s services sectors is necessary if we are to significantly close the productivity gap between the UK and other leading nations. However, if we are to take innovation in services seriously, we must recognise that they innovate differently from advanced manufacturing. We need policies to support increased training and development, and the effective dissemination and exploitation of technology

The Impact of ICT on Economic Sectors

As the author could not find a reassuring mathematical and statistical method in the literature for studying the effect of information communication technologyon enterprises, the author suggested a new research andanalysis method that he also used to study the Hungarian economic sectors. The question of what factors have an effecton their net income is vital for enterprises. The highest increment of specific Gross Value Added was produced by thefields of ‘Manufacturing’, ‘Electricity, gas and water supply’,‘Transport, storage and communication’ and ‘Financialintermediation’. With the exception of ‘Electricity, gas andwater supply’, the other economic sectors belong to the groupof underdeveloped branches (below 50%).On the other hand, ‘Construction’, ‘Health and social work’and‘Hotels and restaurants’ can be seen as laggards, so theygot into the lower left part of the coordinate system.‘Agriculture, hunting and forestry’ can also be classified as alaggard economic sector, but as the effect of the compoundindicator on the increment of Gross Value Added was lesssignificant, it can be found in the upper left part of thecoordinate system. Drawing a trend line on the points, it can bemade clear that it shows a positive gradient, that is, the higherthe usage of ICT devices, the higher improvement can bedetected in the specific Gross Value Added

Analyzing Firm Performance in the Insurance Industry Using Frontier Efficiency Methods

In this introductory chapter to an upcoming book, the authors discuss the two principal types of efficiency frontier methodologies - the econometric (parametric) approach and the mathematical programming (non-parametric) approach. Frontier efficiency methodologies are discussed as useful in a variety of contexts: they can be used for testing economic hypotheses; providing guidance to regulators and policymakers; comparimg economic performance across countries; and informing management of the effects of procedures and strategies adapted by the firm. The econometric approach requires the specification of a production, cost, revenue, or profit function as well as assumptions about error terms. But this methodology is vulnerable to errors in the specification of the functional form or error term. The mathematical programming or linear programming approach avoids this type of error and measures any departure from the frontier as a relative inefficiency. Because each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages, it is recommended to estimate efficiency using more than one method. An important step in efficiency analysis is the definition of inputs and outputs and their prices. Insurer inputs can be classified into three principal groups: labor, business services and materials, and capital. Three principal approaches have been used to measure outputs in the financial services sector: the asset or intermediation approach, the user-cost approach, and the value-added approach. The asset approach treats firms as pure financial intermediaries and would be inappropriate for insurers because they provide other services. The user-cost method determines whether a financial product is an input or output based on its net contribution to the revenues of the firm. This method requires precise data on products, revenues and opportunity costs which are difficult to estimate in insurance. The value-added approach is judged the most appropriate method for studying insurance efficiency. it considers all asset and liability categories to have some output characteristics rather than distinguishing inputs from outputs. In order to measure efficiency in the insurance industry in which outputs are mostly intangible, measurable services must be defined. The three principal services provided by insurance companies are risk pooling and risk-bearing, "real" financial services relating to insured losses, and intermediation. The authors discuss how these services can be measured as outputs in value-added analysis. They then summarize existing efficiency literature.

Efficiency in banking: theory, practice, and evidence

Great strides have been made in the theory of bank technology in terms of explaining banks’ comparative advantage in producing informationally intensive assets and financial services and in diversifying or offsetting a variety of risks. Great strides have also been made in explaining sub-par managerial performance in terms of agency theory and in applying these theories to analyze the particular environment of banking. In recent years, the empirical modeling of bank technology and the measurement of bank performance have begun to incorporate these theoretical developments and yield interesting insights that reflect the unique nature and role of banking in modern economies. This paper gives an overview of two general empirical approaches to measuring bank performance and discusses some of the applications of these approaches found in the literature.Banks and banking - Research

Reforms, Productivity, and Efficiency in Banking: The Indian Experience

India embarked on a strategy of economic reforms in the wake of a serious balance-ofpayments crisis in 1991. A central plank of the reforms was reform in the financial sector and, with banks being the mainstay of financial intermediation, the banking sector. The objective of the banking sector reforms was to promote a diversified, efficient and competitive financial system with the ultimate objective of improving the allocative efficiency of resources through operational flexibility, improved financial viability and institutional strengthening. Beginning from 1992, Indian banks were gradually exposed to greater domestic and international competition. India’s approach to banking reforms has been somewhat different from many other countries. Whereas there has not been privatisation of public sector banks, through a process of partial disinvestment a number of public sector banks have been listed in Stock Exchanges and have become subject to market discipline and greater transparency in this manner. Besides, newly opened banks from the private sector and entry and expansion of several foreign banks resulted in greater competition. Consequent to these developments, there has been a consistent decline in the share of public sector banks in total assets of commercial banks and a declining trend of Herfindahl’s concentration index. Improvements in efficiency of the banking system were reflected in a number of indicators, such as, a gradual reduction in cost of intermediation (defined as the ratio of operating expense to total assets) in the post reform period across various bank groups (barring foreign banks), and decline in the non-performing loans. As a result of these changes, there has been an all-around productivity improvement in the Indian banking sector. While the cost income-ratio (i.e., the ratio of operating expenses to total income less interest expense) as well as net interest margin (i.e., the excess of interest income over interest expense, scaled by total bank assets) of Indian banks showed a declining trend during the post-reform period, the business per employee of Indian banks increased over three-fold in real terms exhibiting an annual compound growth rate of nearly 9 percent. At the same time, the profit per employee increased more than five-fold, implying a compound growth of around 17 percent. Branch productivity also recorded concomitant improvements. Such productivity improvements in the banking sector could be driven by two factors: technological improvements, which expands the range of production possibilities and a catching up effect, as peer pressure amongst banks compels them to raise productivity levels. As far as the future of Indian banking is concerned, a number of issues, such as the credit to small and medium enterprises, customers’ interests and financial inclusion, reducing procedural formalities, listing of the public sector banks in the stock exchange and related market discipline are of paramount importance.

A Productivity analysis of Eastern European banking taking into account risk decomposition and environmental variables

This paper develops a new Luenberger productivity which is applied to a technology where the desirable and undesirable outputs are jointly produced and are possibly negative. The components of this Luenberger productivity index - the efficiency change and the components of the technological shift - are then decomposed into factors determined by the technology, adjusted for ‘risk and environment’, ‘risk management’ and ‘environmental effects’. The method is applied to Central and Eastern European banks operating during 1998–2003 utilising three alternative input/output methodologies (intermediation, production and profit/revenue). Additionally, the comparative analysis of the sensitivity of the productivity indices in the choice of the methodologies is undertaken using statistical and kernel density tests. It is found that the main driver of productivity change in Central and Eastern European banks is technological improvement, which, in the beginning of the analysed period, hinged on the banks’ ability to capitalise on advanced technology and successfully take into account risk and environmental factors. Whereas, in the later sampled periods, we show that one of the most important factors of technological improvement/decline is risk management. Finally, the tests employed confirm previous findings, such as Pasiouras (2008) in this journal, that different input/output methodologies produce statistically different productivity results. Indeed, we also find that external factors, such as a risk in the economy and banking production, and a ‘corruption perception’ affect the productivity of banks.Luenberger productivity index; DEA; banking; undesirable outputs; negative data.

Fatores determinantes da eficiência do setor bancário em Portugal: uma aplicação através de modelos de regressão fracional

The participation in the Euro area and the current financial crisis substantially conditioned the development of the Portuguese banking industry, for which is expected a continuous fall in income and a growing competitive pressure, improving the need to look carefully to issues as efficiency as an essential survival factor. Efficiency indicators of the main banks operating in Portugal were measured through DEA methodology. The application of two-stage models allowed circumventing the usual problems inherent to the coexistence of the production and intermediation approaches. The application of regression for proportions, more appropriate than traditional linear and Tobit regressions, to deal with the fractional nature of the DEA scores, allowed the identification of efficiency determinant factors for the main banks operating in Portugal. The fractional regression models demonstrate evidence of improved specification comparing to traditional regression models. The variables that appear to major influence on overall efficiency are internationalization, size and type of ownership of capital.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Productivity and Technical Efficiency in the Italian Insurance Industry

The purpose of this paper is to partially fill the gap in the existing literature by conducting an analysis of technical efficiency and productivity growth in the Italian insurance industry. The analysis makes use of a detailed data base on Italian life and non-life insurance companies over the period 1985-1993, provided by the Associazione Nazaionale fra le Impress Assicurazioni, the association of insurance companies. The authors measure technical efficiency, changes in technical efficiency over time, and technical changes over time for a sample of Italian insurers, and use the results to test hypotheses regarding industrial organization and to analyze trends associated with structural developments in the market. Data development analysis (DEA) is used to estimate product frontiers for each year of the sample. A production frontier gives the minimum inputs required to produce any given output vector. An important reason for conducting the analysis presented is to provide benchmark statistics to facilitate comparisons of efficiency and productivity under the new European regulatory regime when data on more recent periods become available. In addition, the production frontier results are used to test hypotheses about two major issues in industrial organization - the coexistence of alternative product distribution systems, and organizational forms in an industry. The results indicated that technical efficiency in the Italian insurance industry ranged from 70 to 78 percent during the sample period. There was almost no efficiency change over the sample period. However, productivity declined significantly over the sample period, with a cumulative decline of about 25 percent. The decline was attributable almost exclusively to technological regress, implying that insurers needed more inputs to produce their outputs at the end of the sample period that they did at the beginning. Although improvement in both technical efficiency and technical change appear to be needed, the main problem at present appears to be the adverse shift in the production frontier. Although the sources of the technical regress characterizing the Italian industry are not entirely clear, this phenomenon has been observed in at least one other financial services industry that experienced deregulation and growth in new products and distribution systems - the Spanish savings banks. In a dynamically changing environment, many insurers may be adopting new approaches to producing their outputs. This provides more opportunities for firms to make mistakes in the choice of technology, perhaps leading to excessive consumption of inputs even by "best practice" firms. An increase in the complexity of insurance products and markets could have a similar effect. As firms become more experienced at operating in the new environment and the initial false-starts in the adoption of new technology have been corrected, the productivity of the Italian insurance industry can be expected to improve. The increase in competition resulting from deregulation should reinforce this process, as firms that fail to improve are likely to be penalized the by the market.

Why Has the U.S. Financial Sector Grown so Much? The Role of Corporate Finance.

The share of finance in U.S. GDP has been multiplied by more than three over the postwar period. I argue, using evidence and theory, that corporate finance is a key factor behind this evolution. Inside the finance industry, credit intermediation and corporate finance are more important than globalization, increased trading, or the development of mutual funds for explaining the trend. In the non financial sector, firms with low cash flows account for a growing share of total investment. I build a simple equilibrium model to capture these salient features and I use it to interpret the data. I find that corporate demand is the main contributor to the growth of the finance industry, but also that efficiency gains in finance have been important to limit credit rationing. Overall, the model can account for a bit more than half of the financial sector's growth.