GREASE OR SAND THE WHEEL? THE EFFECT OF INDIVIDUAL BRIBES ON THE DRIVERS OF AGGREGATE PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

The Asian paradox suggests a net grease-the-wheel effect of corruption. Under the assumption of diminishing returns to bribes, going beyond the single-representative-firm assumption, we argue that the grease and sand-the-wheel effects are likely to co-exist among a large number of firms, and that the industrial effect of corruption depends on the productivity drivers that fuel firm’s dynamics. We decompose Indonesian manufacturing labor productivity growth while contrasting and comparing the contributions of no-, low- and high-bribing firms over the period 1975-94. We confirm the coexistence of grease and sand-the-wheel effects. Industrial productivity gains stem first from the net entry of non-corrupted firms, evidencing a sand-the-wheel effect. Market share reallocation from low to high productivity growth incumbents paying low bribes is the second source of productivity growth, pointing at a grease-the-wheel effect. Intra- plant productivity growth is overall negative and largely attributable to high-corruption plants, suggesting a sand-the-wheel effect

Industrial demographics, industrial dynamics, and aggregate total factor productivity growth in Indonesian manufacturing, 1975-95.

After an introductory chapter, chapter 2 reviews and assesses the existing theoretical and empirical literature on TFP growth. A detailed review of the economic and historical literature on productivity growth in Indonesian manufacturing follows. This allows constructing a new methodology for the estimation of aggregate TFP growth in Indonesian manufacturing, using a panel dataset of establishments over the period 1975-95. New estimates are presented and compared with historical evidence. Chapter 3 further emphasises the issue of establishments' heterogeneity by presenting a meticulous review of both the theoretical and empirical literature on industrial demography. Chapter 4 investigates further the heterogeneity of manufacturing establishments in terms of productivity, and size. It offers a comprehensive demographic study of manufacturing establishments over the 21-year period, focusing on productivity and size differentials, as well as on establishments' entry and exit. In a second part, relaxing the representative plant hypothesis and taking establishments' turnover effect into account, I present several decompositions of aggregate TFP growth into incumbents' contribution and the contribution of entrants and exiters. Chapter 5 draws on this literature and tests econometrically the different hypotheses aiming at an explanation of establishments' productivity heterogeneity. Hypotheses are tailored to the Indonesian manufacturing sector through a careful reference to the economic history of the sector. Chapter 6 offers three detailed historical and economic industry studies, aiming at the discovery of central factors and processes explaining the evolution of the manufacturing sector in terms of productivity change and establishments' demography. It also tests econometrically hypotheses regarding the main factors explaining survival and exit of establishments. Chapter 7 recalls the results of the reestimation of aggregate TFP growth using a new methodology, and brings together the main outcomes of the subsequent chapters, thereby offering an explanation of aggregate TFP growth with detailed microeconomic mechanisms

On generalized Ventcel's type boundary conditions for Laplace operator in a bounded domain

acceptée dans la revue SIAM J. Math. Anal.International audienceVentcel boundary conditions are second order differential conditions that appear in asymptotic models. Like Robin boundary conditions, they lead to wellposed variational problems under a sign condition of a coefficient. Nevertheless situations where this condition is violated appeared in several works. The wellposedness of such problems was still open. This manuscript establishes, in the generic case, the existence and uniqueness of the solution for the Ventcel boundary value problem without the sign condition. Then, we consider perforated geometries and give conditions to remove the genericity restriction

Computations of the first eigenpairs for the Schrödinger operator with magnetic field

International audienceThis paper is devoted to computations of eigenvalues and eigenvectors for the Schrödinger operator with constant magnetic field in a domain with corners, as the semi-classical parameter $h$ tends to $0$. The eigenvectors corresponding to the smallest eigenvalues concentrate in the corners: They have a two-scale structure, consisting of a corner layer at scale $\sqrt h$ and an oscillatory term at scale $h$. The high frequency oscillations make the numerical computations particularly delicate. We propose a high order finite element method to overcome this difficulty. Relying on such a discretization, we illustrate theoretical results on plane sectors, squares, and other straight or curved polygons. We conclude by discussing convergence issues

Artificial boundary conditions to compute correctors in linear elasticity

International audienceIn this paper, we derive artificial boundary conditions for the computation of correcting terms in a perturbed problem of linear elasticity. Theses conditions appear to be of Ventcel form, and lead to a non-coercive boundary value problem

Artificial conditions for the linear elasticity equations

34 pagesInternational audienc

Numerical simulations for nodal domains and spectral minimal partitions

International audienceWe recall here some theoretical results of B. Helffer, T. Hoffmann-Ostenhof and S. Terracini about minimal partitions and propose numerical computations to illustrate some of their published or unpublished conjectures

Micro-family-owned businesses in hostile environment: future engine for growth?

Using panel data from the four waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey in 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2007 we investigate the prerequisite for and contribution of micro-family-businesses to economic development. We find that family-owned firms are on average fairly profitable compared with the industrial sector profit standard. Failure rates between 1997 and 2000 are very low (about 10%), while the industrial sector experimented a massive shakeout of about 33% in the wake of the 1997 crisis (Ter Wengel & Rodriguez, 2006), with an increase in the number of family-businesses between the two years of observation. This paper contributes to the economics of entrepreneurship studies by continuing the discussion of entrepreneurship in hostile business environments (Baumol, 1990; Sobel, 2008)