Portuguese Economic Journal, 2005, Volume 4, Nº 1
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- Demand shocks and productivity growthPublication . Menezes, António Gomes deThis paper presents evidence on the relationship between cyclical shocks and productivity growth, for 20 2-digit SIC US manufacturing industries and a set of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and oil price shocks. The paper uses as a mea- sure of productivity change a Solow residual corrected for a wide range of non- technological effects due to imperfect-competition, non-constant returns to scale, and cyclical utilization rates of capital and labor services. The empirical frame- work identifies policy shocks independently of productivity measurement issues via a two-step procedure. While the typical industry shows weak responses of pro- ductivity to the shocks considered, in some industries temporary contractionary policy shocks lead to increases in productivity. In addition, the results reveal that there are localized asymmetries, with contractionary policy shocks having larger productivity effects than their expansionary counterparts. The results support the thesis that job reallocation is an important channel linking contractionary policy shocks and productivity growth. These results support the pit-stop view of down- turns.
- “Ideas” driven growth : the OECD evidencePublication . Pessoa, ArgentinoThis paper estimates the parameters of the ideas production function cru- cial to recent ideas-driven growth models. Using U. S. patents granted to residents in OECD countries to generate the stock of commercially used ideas, we provide evidence for two main findings. First, at the level of the production of ideas, we find evidence of increasing returns to scale in the stock of ideas and number of researchers, but marginal decreasing returns in each one of these factors. Second, we provide evidence of the association between ideas growth and economic growth for the OECD as a whole in the long run.
- Low-wage mobility in the Portuguese labour marketPublication . Vieira, José A. CabralLow-wage employment has become a matter of concern in many coun- tries, Portugal being among them. In particular, the extent to which low-wage employment is a permanent or transitory situation is an important issue. This paper examines low-wage mobility in the Portuguese labour market using the bivariate probit model proposed by van de Ven and van Praag (1981), in order to account for the potential endogeneity of the initial state. For this purpose, we use a matched employer-employee panel data for 1996 and 2000. Raw figures show that a signif- icant number of workers are trapped into low-wage employment. We also find that males and the better-educated are more likely to escape from such a situation. Fur- thermore, initial firm characteristics, such as firm size, age and industry influence mobility. In particular, low-wage workers in larger or in newer firms have better mobility prospects.