Unraveling the Origins of EU Countries Productivity Growth - Evidence on R&D and Competition from Cross-Country Industry Analysis

Over the last two decades EU countries experienced diverging productivity growthdevelopments. By examining the sources of EU countries growth drivers on the sectorallevel, the paper takes a new look on the influence of innovations. While standard neoclassicalNon-ICT capital deepening turns out the major contributor to EU productivitygrowth, detail industry analysis reveals that growth in innovation stocks via increasedR&D in specialized and science-based industries spurred productivity growth as well.But those effects are only found for Nordic and Western Continental EU countries,while others are lacking such effects. Moreover, these specialized and science-basedindustries experienced strong innovation and productivity growth by decreases in competition,thereby favoring Schumpeterian growth arguments for highly dynamic sectors.Productivity growth, market structure, competition, innovation, R&D, panel data, industry analysis

ICT Intermediates, Growth and Productivity SpilloversEvidence from Comparison of Growth Effects inGerman and US Manufacturing Sectors

Recent pre-crisis growth accounting exercises attribute strong productivity growth toincreased investments in information and communication technologies (ICT), especiallyduring the mid-1990s. EU-wide stylized facts about a growing US–EU productivity gapare confirmed for Germany, particularly showing no substantially economy-wide effectsfrom ICT for German sectors. Tracing the effect from ICT during the period 1991–2005,this study takes a different view by expanding the concept of value added to gross output,additionally including different types of intermediate inputs. The findings suggest thatimported intermediate inputs played a more dominating role in Germany than in the US,particularly imported non-ICT and ICT materials, although domestically-produced ICTmaterials were important as well. In the US, main driving forces were domesticallyproducednon-ICT services and ICT materials, even though imported ICT materialswere on the upraise post 1995. Moreover, there were decisive differences is countries’TFP growth rates with about twice the size in the US. According to robust econometricanalysis there have been strong spillover effects from increasing domestically-producedICT materials in German TFP growth, while for the US TFP growth originated fromincreasing imported ICT materials. It will be argued that these different productivityeffects stem from different functions of ICT in the production process. However, TFPgrowth differentials between Germany and the US during 1991 to 2000 are explained toa great extent by strong US TFP growth in the Electrical & Electronic Machinery sector.Industry productivity growth, information and communication technology, intermediate inputs, growth accounting, technology spillovers

Institutions and Innovations as Sources of Productivity Growth Cross-Country Evidence

The investigation of the determinants of economic growth plays an important role forour understanding of the sources of cross-country income differences. This paper analyzesthe effects of institutions and innovations on country productivity growth. The empiricalevidence shows that institutions and innovations matter, in particular for human capitalefficiency. Without controlling for endogeneity the effect of innovations turns significantonly when aggregate institutions indexes or human capital efficiency are included.When controlling for endogeneity innovations become insignificant, but more institutionalvariables become relevant. Under robustness checks innovations indeed have a directeffect on country productivity growth moderated by a country’s human capital efficiency.Allowing for three alternative institutional variables does not change the effects of theinstitutional variables of interest.Productivity growth, institutions, information and communication technology, research and development, panel regressions

Bank insolvency risk and aggregate Z-score measures: a caveat

We demonstrate that a popular approach to constructing (weighted) mean-based aggregate bank insolvency risk measures is inherently biased; we also suggest an alternative approach that avoids this problem.insolvency risk, aggregate Z-score, Jensen's inequality

The Economic Impact of Capital-Skill Complementarities in German and US Industries Productivity Growth and the New Economy

US labor productivity in ICT-skill intensive industries experienced tremendousincreases in post–1995 trend growth compared to Germany, while other (non-ICT-skillintensive) industries showed similar growth trends in both countries. Examining thesource of industry productivity growth in German ICT-skill intensive sectors, there is noempirical evidence on the influence of ICT-skill complementarities; rather was productivitygrowth of German Motor Vehicles & Other Transports driven by Non-ICT-skillcomplementarities. In case of the US two ICT-skill intensive sectors, Office Machinery &Electronic Equipment and Motor Vehicles & Other Transport, were found to haveexperienced strong productivity growth via ICT-skill complementarities. These findingsshed light on varying sectoral complementarities between physical and human capitaland show a decisive disparity in the source of German-US productivity differentials inthe goods-producing sector during the New Economy. Such differentials originatedfrom a substantial dissimilarity in production processes as well as from higher ICTintensity and skill endowment in the US.Industry productivity growth, heterogeneous labor, capital-skill complementarity, information and communication technology

Neutron star properties in the Thomas-Fermi model

The modern nucleon-nucleon interaction of Myers and Swiatecki, adjusted to the properties of finite nuclei, the parameters of the mass formula, and the behavior of the optical potential is used to calculate the properties of $\beta$--equilibrated neutron star matter, and to study the impact of this equation of state on the properties of (rapidly rotating) neutron stars and their cooling behavior. The results are in excellent agreement with the outcome of calculations performed for a broad collection of sophisticated nonrelativistic as well as relativistic models for the equation of state.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, 15 ps-figure