ICT Demand Behaviour: an International Comparison

JEL classification: E22, O47, O57, R24International audienceThis study aims to provide some empirical explanations for the gaps in ICT diffusion between industrialized countries and especially between European countries and the United States. National macroeconomic panel data are mobilized for eleven OECD countries over the 1981-2005 period. The analysis is based on factor demand estimates. It provides some original results: (i) The impact on ICT diffusion is positive for the level of education and negative for market rigidities, and both increased over time (in absolute terms) until the middle of the 1990s; (ii) In each country, the price-elasticity of demand for ICT decreased (in absolute terms) over time, from 2 at the beginning of the 1980s to 1 in the middle of the 2000s

Product and Labour Market Regulations, Production Prices, Wages and Productivity

This study is an attempt to evaluate the effects of product and labour market regulations on industry productivity through their various impacts on changes in production prices and wages. In a first stage, the estimation of a regression equation on an industry*country panel, with controls for country*industry and country*year fixed effects, show that multi-factor productivity is negatively and significantly influenced by both indicators of industrial prices from same industry and weighted average of industrial prices from other industries, and by indicators of country wages weighted by industry labour shares for low and high skilled workers. In a second stage, an economic policy simulation of the implications these results on the basis of their calibration by the OECD product and labour market anti-competitive regulation indicators suggests that nearly all countries could expect sizeable gains in multifactor productivity from deregulation reforms

DO PRODUCT MARKET REGULATIONS IN UPSTREAM SECTORS CURB PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH? PANEL DATA EVIDENCE FOR OECD COUNTRIES

The paper focuses on the influence of upstream competition for productivity outcomes in downstream sectors. This relation is illustrated with a neo-Schumpeterian theoretical model of innovation (Aghion et al., 1997) with market imperfections in the production of intermediate goods. In this context, upstream market imperfections create barriers to competition in downstream markets and upstream producers use their market power to share innovation rents sought by downstream firms. Thus, lack of competition in upstream markets curbs incentives to improve productivity downstream, negatively affecting productivity outcomes. We test this prediction by estimating an error correction model that differentiates the potential downstream effects of lack of upstream competition in situations close and far from the global technological frontier. We measure competition upstream with regulatory burden indicators derived from OECD data on sectoral product market regulation and the industry-level efficiency improvement and the distance to frontier variables by means of a multifactor productivity (MFP) index. Panel regressions are run for 15 OECD countries and 20 sectors over the 1985-2007 period with country, sector and year fixed effects. We find clear evidence that anticompetitive regulations in upstream sectors have curbed MFP growth downstream over the past 15 years. These effects tend to be strongest for observations (i.e. country/sector/period triads) that are close to the global technological frontier. Our results suggest that, measured at the average distance to frontier and average level of anticompetitive regulations, the marginal effect of increasing competition by easing such regulations is to increase MFP growth by between 1 and 1.5 per cent per year in the OECD countries covered by our sample. Our results are robust to changes in the way MFP and the regulatory burden indicators are constructed, as well as to variations in the sample of countries and/or sectors

Do Product Market Regulations in Upstream Sectors Curb Productivity Growth? Panel Data Evidence for OECD Countries

Based on an endogenous growth model, we show that intermediate goods markets imperfections can curb incentives to improve productivity downstream. We confirm such prediction by estimating a model of multifactor productivity growth in which the effects of upstream competition vary with distance to frontier on a panel of 15 OECD countries and 20 sectors over 1985-2007. Competitive pressures are proxied with sectoral product market regulation data. We find evidence that anticompetitive upstream regulations have curbed MFP growth over the past 15 years, more strongly so for observations that are close to the productivity frontier.

Tailoring the magnetic properties of Fe asymmetric nanodots

Asymmetric dots as a function of their geometry have been investigated using three-dimensional (3D) object oriented micromagnetic framework (OOMMF) code. The effect of shape asymmetry of the disk on coercivity and remanence is studied. Angular dependence of the remanence and coercivity is also addressed. Asymmetric dots are found to reverse their magnetization by nucleation and propagation of a vortex, when the field is applied parallel to the direction of asymmetry. However, complex reversal modes appear when the angle at which the external field is applied is varied, leading to a non monotonic behavior of the coercivity and remanence.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure