Rémy Lecat

Determinants of Productivity Per Employee: An Empirical Estimation Using Panel Data

Two different approaches are used in this article to study productivity per employee: the determinants of its growth rate in the 1990s are first examined, and then the determinants of its level, using a more structural approach. ICT are shown to have a positive and significant effect on both growth rates and levels of productivity. This result is consistent with that of Gust and Marquez (2002), although the sample of countries is larger and GMM are used. In both sections of the paper, the employment rate and productivity exhibit a significant negative relationship, arising from the concentration of employment on the most productive members of the workforce. Indicators of financial depth and price stability are found to be significant.

The ’Housing Bubble’ and Financial Factors: Insights from a Structural Model of the French and Spanish Residential Markets

Over the last decade, France and Spain have experienced property price and residential investment increases which were among the strongest and the lengthiest in the euro area. Although the quality of the underlying data limits the precision of the estimates, the present paper aims at analysing the fundamental factors behind these evolutions. The analysis presented here assesses whether the observed price dynamics may be attributed to a pure expectation bubble phenomenon or to the large changes in financial and demographic factors. This is done by means of a structural model of the demand and supply sides of the housing market with an error-correction process. When taking into account a standard set of macroeconomic variables, our estimates imply that residential property prices in France and Spain were approximately 20% above the level explained by their fundamentals. When demographic and financial factors such as the borrowing capacity are taken on board, the degree of overvaluation is drastically reduced. The adjustment path to equilibrium is slightly faster in France than in Spain, but both countries display significant downward rigidity in prices.

Service Deregulation, Competition, and the Performance of French and Italian Firms

We use firm-level data for France and Italy to explore the impact of service regulation reform implemented in the two countries on the mark-up and eventually on the performance of firms between the second half of the 1990s and 2007. In line with some previous studies, we find that the relation between entry barriers and productivity is negative. This relation is intermediated through the firm’s mark up and is stronger in the long than in the short run.

Productivity trends from 1890 to 2012 in advanced countries

In order to examine innovation diffusion and convergence processes, we study productivity trends, trend breaks and levels for 13 advanced countries over 1890-2012. We highlight two productivity waves, a big one following the second industrial revolution and a small one following the ICT revolution. The first big wave was staggered across countries, hitting the US first in the Interwar years and the rest of the world after World War II. It came long after the actual innovation could be implemented, emphasizing a long diffusion process. The productivity leader changed during the period under study, the Australian and UK leadership becoming a US one during the first part of the XXth century and, for very particular reasons, also a Norwegian, Dutch and French one at least for some years at the end of the XXth century. The convergence process has been erratic, halted by inappropriate institutions, technology shocks, financial crises but above all by wars, which led to major productivity level leaps, downwards for countries experiencing war on their soil, upwards for other countries. Productivity trend breaks are detected following wars, global financial crises, global supply shocks (such as the oil price shocks) and major policy changes (such as structural reforms in Canada or Sweden). The upward trend break for the US in the mid-1990s is confirmed, as well as the downward trend break for the Euro Area in the same period. The downward trend break observed as early as the mid-2000s for the US leads one to question the future contribution of the ICT revolution to productivity enhancement.

Market Shares and Trade Specialisation of France, Germany and Italy

The trade performances of France, Germany and Italy in the 1990s and 2000s have followed heterogeneous national patterns. Contrary to the Italian situation, French and German divergences cannot be explained by relative cost and price developments; geographical specialisation has a limited role in the differences between the three countries. Sectoral specialisation sheds some light to these divergences, emphasising the exposure of Italy to emerging country competition and the limited specialisation of France, while all three countries share a lack of specialisation in ICT products. Non-price competitiveness indicators, such as R&D or education levels, could also contribute to explain the German strength and Italian weakness.

How do firms adjust production factors to the cycle

We study production factor adjustment taking into account factor utilisation in multiple dimensions (labour and capital working time, capital capacity utilisation) through a unique survey among French manufacturing firms. This survey also allows us to examine the impact of obstacles to increasing capital operating time on this adjustment path. This survey, merged with balanced sheet and profit and loss accounts from fiscal reports, yields an unbalanced panel of 6,066 observations over 1993-2010. Factor utilisation adjusts the most rapidly, first through capital capacity utilisation and the capital workweek and then labour working time. The adjustment is slow for the number of employees and even slower for the capital stock. In case of a change in factor volume targets, the three factor utilisation degrees adjust to offset the very slow reaction of factor volumes. Obstacles to increasing the capital operating time lead to a slower adjustment of capital operating time, offset by a stronger adjustment of capacity utilisation.

Labour relations quality and productivity: An empirical analysis on French firms

This analysis characterizes empirically how good labour relations can alleviate the negative impact on productivity of regulatory constraints or workforce opposition. Our evidence of good labour relations lies in the existence of binding collective agreements, at the firm or at the industry level. The estimations are based on a unique dataset collected by the Banque de France about the obstacles French firms may face in increasing their utilization of production factors. Data are an unbalanced sample of 7,441 observations, corresponding to 1,545 companies, over the period 1991-2008. Our main results may be summarized as follows: ‘workforce or union opposition’ interacted with ‘regulatory constraints’ has a negative significant impact on total factor productivity (TFP). Regulatory constraints would become really binding when workers or unions use them as a tool to oppose management’s decisions; ‘regulatory constraints’ interacted with ‘branch or firm agreement’ has a positive significant impact on TFP. These agreements, which can only be obtained if labour relations are supportive, would be used by firms to offset the negative impact of regulatory constraints. These results confirm that labour relations quality, at the branch or the firm levels, is an important factor of productive performance.

Margin Rate and the Cycle: The Role of Trade Openness

Using three datasets of French manufacturing firms, this paper studies the role of trade openness, in relation with the cycle, as a determinant of company margin rate. Margin rates increase as capacity utilization tightens (and vice versa), reflecting the procyclicality of margin rates. However, high import rates are limiting this procyclicality: when capacities are tight, domestic producers may not be able to serve demand, but foreign producers may substitute for them if they are already present on the market as reflected by the level of import rates.

GDP per capita in advanced countries over the 20th century

This study presents a GDP per capita level and growth comparison across 17 main advanced countries and over the 1890-2013 long period. It proposes also a comparison of the level and growth of the main components of GDP per capita through an accounting breakdown and runs Philips-Sul (2007) convergence tests over GDP per capita and its main components. These components are total factor productivity, capital intensity (capital stock per hours worked), working time and employment rate. Over the whole period, standards of living as measured by GDP per capita experienced a very marked increase in advanced countries, especially because of the surge in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and in capital intensity. The main results of the study are the following: i) All countries experienced at least one big wave of GDP per capita growth during the 20th Century, but of different sizes and in a staggered manner; ii) Almost all countries have suffered from a significant decline in GDP per capita growth during the last decades of the period; iii) The GDP per capita leadership changed among large countries over the period, from the UK until WWI to the US since WWII; iv) There is an overall convergence process among advanced countries, mainly after WWII, relying mostly on capital intensity convergence and then on TFP convergence, while evolutions in hours worked and even more employment rates are more disparate; v) But this convergence process is not continuous and was particularly scattered since 1990, as the convergence of the EA, the UK and Japan to the US GDP per capita level stopped at a large distance, with reforming or structurally flexible countries accelerating thanks to the Information and Communication Technology shock, while some countries such as Japan lingered in crisis; vi) Employment rates and hours worked did not contribute to the overall convergence process, with club convergence very often appearing for these variables among European countries on one side and Anglo-Saxon countries on the other. Dynamics were especially divergent between these two groups since 1974, as opposite labor policies were implemented.

Convergence of Firm-Level Productivity, Globalisation, Information Technology, and Competition: Evidence from France

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers’ convergence could therefore constitute an important part of productivity growth at the macroeconomic level. This article sheds light on this convergence process in the 1990s and the 2000s in France and on some of the factors which can explain it. Productivity convergence was stronger for labour productivity than for total factor productivity. But most importantly the speed of convergence has slowed during the course of the 1990s, a fact which is explained principally by the acceleration of the productivity of firms on the technological frontier. Three possible explanations of these stylised facts are considered: globalisation, information technology, and competition. Globalisation and information technology may have benefited the most productive firms more and the growth of competition may at the same time have stimulated the productivity of firms at the frontier while discouraging the convergence of the least productive firms.