This paper investigates the relationship between telecommunications infrastructure competition, investment and productivity. Using econometric modelling and input-output economics, the analysis examines and measures the extent to which telecommunications has contributed to national and sectoral productivity performance. The main findings from this paper suggests that most industries have benefi...

In parametric stochastic frontier models, the composed error is specified as the sum of a two-sided noise component and a one-sided inefficiency component, which is usually assumed to be half-normal, implying that the error distribution is skewed in one direction. In practice, however, estimation residuals may display skewness in the wrong direction. Model respecification or pulling a new sampl...

Some multi-sector endogenous growth models make strong predictions about productivity differences across sectors in the form of a distribution or density function. In this paper it is demonstrated that this distribution is left-skewed for a wide range of plausible parameter values. This stands in strong contrast to the right-skewed shape of the respective empirical distribution estimated by ker...

The "big-bang" liberalization of the inefficient Russian economy in 1992 provides a fruitful setting for analyzing the impact of several dimensions of market competition and other factors on enterprise efficiency. We analyze 1992-1998 panel data on 14,961 enterprises covering 75 percent of industrial employment, emphasizing the varied sources, geographic scope, intensity, time path, and surviva...

Agriculture is the focus of much contention in free trade negotiations. The Japanese government is against liberalizing the rice trade on the grounds that it would threaten “national food security” in the events of such shocks as crop failure, war, and embargo. Trade liberalization is expected to make Japan more dependent upon food imports and to make the Japanese economy more susceptible to th...

American industries have grown more concentrated over the last 40 years. In absence of productivity innovation, this should lead to price hikes and output reductions, decreasing consumer welfare. With US census data from 1972 2012, I use disentangle revenue output. Industry-level estimates show that concentration increases are positively correlated real growth, uncorrelated with changes overall...

Using detailed household-level data from Malawi on physical quantities of agricultural outputs and inputs, we measure farm total factor productivity (TFP), controlling for land quality, rain, transitory shocks. We find that operated size capital are essentially unrelated to TFP, implying substantial misallocation. The output gain a reallocation factors their efficient use among existing farmers...