Business and Economics > Production and Operations Management

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Soo Jung Chang
,
Hamin Lee
,
Sumin Lee
,
Samil Oh
,
Zexi Sun
, and
Xin Cindy Xu
This paper examines the economic impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Korea. Korea is among the global frontrunners in AI adoption, with higher adoption rates among larger, younger, and technologically advanced firms. AI holds the promise for boosting productivity and output, though the effects are more pronounced among larger and mature Korean firms. About half of jobs are exposed to AI, with higher exposures among female, younger, more educated, and higher income workers. Korea’s strong innovation and digital infrastructure highlights its AI readiness, while enhancing labor market flexibility and social safety nets are essential to fully harness AI’s potential.
Oyun Erdene Adilbish
,
Diego A. Cerdeiro
,
Romain A Duval
,
Gee Hee Hong
,
Luca Mazzone
,
Lorenzo Rotunno
,
Hasan H Toprak
, and
Maryam Vaziri
Europe faces a well-known productivity malaise, with a large and widening aggregate productivity gap relative to the U.S. In this paper, we provide a novel diagnosis of the firm-level roots of Europe’s productivity growth slowdown through an analysis of data covering the universe of firms in Europe and the U.S over their life cycles. Compared to their U.S. counterparts, we identify critical performance gaps among both Europe’s frontier firms and young high-growth firms. Our firm-level analyses reveal that smaller markets and limited market-based financing are key bottlenecks for frontier European firms, while skill shortages and insufficient risk capital, such as venture capital, hinder the formation and subsequent growth of young firms in Europe. These findings suggest that removing remaining intra-Europe barriers to accelerate factor and product markets integration, alongside national reforms to facilitate swifter resource reallocation and enhance human capital, could help revive Europe’s productivity growth.
Serhan Cevik
,
Sadhna Naik
, and
Keyra Primus
European countries are lagging behind in productivity growth, with significant productivity gaps across industries. In this study, we use comparable industry-level data to explore the patterns and sources of total factor productivity (TFP) growth across 28 countries in Europe over the period 1995–2020. Our empirical results highlight four main points: (i) TFP growth is driven largely by the extent to which countries are involved in scientific and technological innovation as the leader country or benefiting from stronger knowledge spillovers; (ii) the technological gap is associated with TFP growth as countries move towards the technological frontier by adopting new innovations and technologies; (iii) increased investment in information and communications technology (ICT) capital and research and development (R&D) contributes significantly to higher TFP growth; and (iv)the impact of human capital tends to be stronger when a country is closer to the technological frontier. The core findings of this study call for policy measures and structural reforms to promote innovation and facilitate the diffusion of new and existing technologies across Europe.
Bas B. Bakker
,
Sophia Chen
,
Dmitry Vasilyev
,
Olga Bespalova
,
Moya Chin
,
Daria Kolpakova
,
Archit Singhal
, and
Yuanchen Yang
Since 1980, income levels in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have shown no convergence with those in the US, in stark contrast to emerging Asia and emerging Europe, which have seen rapid convergence. A key factor contributing to this divergence has been sluggish productivity growth in LAC. Low productivity growth has been broad-based across industries and firms in the formal sector, with limited diffusion of technology being an important contributing factor. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) hold significant potential to enhance productivity in the formal sector, foster its expansion, reduce informality, and facilitate LAC’s convergence with advanced economies. However, there is a risk that the region will fall behind advanced countries and frontier emerging markets in AI adoption. To capitalize on the benefits of AI, policies should aim to facilitate technological diffusion and job transition.
International Monetary Fund. Communications Department
Productivity must play a more important role in driving sustained growth as our societies age. But there’s no consensus on how to reverse the broad slowdown in productivity growth seen across almost all countries over the past 20 years. F&D magazine’s September issue invites leading thinkers to examine productivity from multiple angles, including dynamism, innovation, demographics, and sustainability.
Pierre Nguimkeu
and
Cedric I Okou
This paper analyzes the drivers of digital technologies adoption and how it affects the productivity of small scale businesses in Africa. We use data collected from two semi-rural markets in Benin, where grains and legumes are key staple foods and one-third of the population has internet access. We develop a structural model to rationalize digital technologies adoption—defined as the use of mobile broadband internet connection through smartphones—as well as usage patterns and outcomes observed in the data. The model’s implications are empirically tested using both reduced-form and structural maximum likelihood estimations. We find that younger, wealthier, more educated grains and legumes suppliers and those closely surrounded by other users are more likely to adopt digital technologies. Adopters perform 4-5 more business transactions each month than non-adopters on average, suggesting that digital technologies adoption could raise the monthly frequency and amounts of trades by up to 50%. Most adopters are women, but their productivity gains are lower than their male counterparts. Counterfactual policy simulations with the estimated model suggest that upgrading the broadband internet quality yields the largest improvement in adoption rate and productivity gains, while reducing its cost for a given connection quality only has a moderate effect. Improving access to credit only increases the adoption rate of constrained suppliers.
International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
The Selected Issues paper focuses on productivity and growth in Peru. Firms have maintained smaller sizes to avoid the application of a profit-sharing legislation, which has resulted in lower productivity. After a decade of high economic growth averaging over 6 percent per year, potential growth has been falling since 2014. A much slower pace of investment and human has driven the decline capital accumulation, but most notably, a decline in total factor productivity growth. In line with the macroeconomic trends, firm-level productivity has worsened, and the decline has been broad-based across the economy. Special corporate tax regimes and labor legislations and regulations have created barriers to productivity growth. To raise productivity, policies will need to focus on reforming regulations that impose excessive costs to formalizing or growing a business. Down the line, introducing greater labor market flexibility would ensure that workers could transition to productive sectors of the economy and reduce labor informality.
Mariarosaria Comunale
and
Andrea Manera
We review the literature on the effects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption and the ongoing regulatory efforts concerning this technology. Economic research encompasses growth, employment, productivity, and income inequality effects, while regulation covers market competition, data privacy, copyright, national security, ethics concerns, and financial stability. We find that: (i) theoretical research agrees that AI will affect most occupations and transform growth, but empirical findings are inconclusive on employment and productivity effects; (ii) regulation has focused primarily on topics not explored by the academic literature; (iii) across countries, regulations differ widely in scope and approaches and face difficult trade-offs.
Ms. Era Dabla-Norris
,
Mr. Tidiane Kinda
,
Kaustubh Chahande
,
Hua Chai
,
Yadian Chen
,
Alessia De Stefani
,
Yosuke Kido
,
Fan Qi
, and
Alexandre Sollaci
COVID-19 hit on the back of weakening productivity growth in many advanced and emerging Asian countries, a trend that could be exacerbated by the pandemic. Interestingly, productivity growth in the region was slowing even amid increased innovation effort, as proxied by spending on research and development (R&D) and number of patents. A key element underpinning this disconnect is the growing dispersion in productivity growth, innovation effort, and digitalization across and within sectors. Asia has risen to become an innovation powerhouse, contributing to more than half of world patents. The rise of Asia as an innovation hub has been driven by a few frontier countries that have experienced a sharp increase in digital and computer-related patents, supported by solid R&D spending and a large share of researchers in the labor force. Within countries, R&D has become more concentrated in a smaller share of firms in frontier Asia. Empirical evidence using firm-level data highlight that the high concentration in R&D is associated with large dispersion in productivity. External exposure to competition and innovation, including through trade, supports innovation and help close productivity gaps for firms closer to the frontier. Non-frontier Asian developing countries have benefited from technology diffusion through a higher share of imported high-technology goods and by granting more patents to non-residents, supported by improvements in human capital and digital infrastructure. For these countries, further integration to the international economy, including global value chains, greater entrepreneurship, and expanding innovative labour supply could support productivity by encouraging innovation, including process innovation which is associated with larger productivity at the firm-level. Policies to foster innovation, reduce productivity gaps, and ultimately boost aggregate productivity can be grouped into two buckets. For countries close to the technological frontier, R&D tax credits and grants, business-university R&D collaboration, and lower trade barriers would support broader-based innovation and help close productivity gaps. For countries farther from the frontier, further improvements in digital infrastructure, skilled labor force, openness to trade and FDI, and patent protection, could promote resource reallocation to the most productive firms and enhance incentives for technological adoption, supporting diffusion and higher productivity.
Alexandre Sollaci
I investigate the aggregate effects of R&D tax credits in the US. Because it subsidizes R&D activity and because credit rates vary between states, this policy has both spatial and dynamic effects on the economy. To address this issue, I construct an endogenous growth model with spatial heterogeneity and agglomeration spillovers in innovation. Aggregate outcomes in this model are thus affected by the spatial distribution of the population in the economy, which is itself endogenous and reacts to policy. I use this framework to identify a set of local R&D subsidies that maximize aggregate welfare.