Posts Tagged ‘productivity’

Why Should the U. S. Have a Specific Productivity Policy?

Wednesday, July 27th, 2016

This question is answered by  Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Part II of the  report, “Think Like an Enterprise: Why Nations Need Comprehensive Productivity Strategies.” He states, “Rather than think of an economy as a large market with self-interested actors transacting on the basis of price and seeking to maximize productivity, it is more accurate to conceive of an economy as a large, integrated enterprise that requires coordination of activities that individual enterprises will not effectively undertake on their own.”

 

His opinion is contradictory to that of most Anglo-Saxon nation economists, whose policies are based on two major competing doctrines vying for influence: “neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economics, neither of which supports a national productivity policy.” In a nutshell, he states, “the neoclassical economic doctrine is focused on limiting government’s role in the economy, even as neo-Keynesians see the government’s main role as managing the business cycle and supporting a fairer distribution of income.” His definitions were so simple that even non-economists like me could understand them:

Neoclassical ? focuses on the “managing scarce resources in such a way that maximizes the net benefit from their use, and that produces the quantity and mix of goods and services most beneficial to society.”

Neo-Keynesian ? is “grounded in the core belief that demand for goods and services from business investment, government spending, and consumer spending drives growth.”

Atkinson particularly criticizes neoclassical economists because they “do not study how societies create new forms of production, products, and business models to expand productivity; rather, they study markets to see how commodities are exchanged.”

He criticizes neo-Keynesian economic policy prescriptions because they “revolve around increasing government spending to keep the economy at full employment and ensuring economic fairness and redistribution, because…their goal is not productivity growth, it is full employment.”

Atkinson states. “Thus, the first step for any policymaker seeking to maximize the economy’s productivity is to reject the conventional neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economic advice and embrace an alternative economic doctrine grounded in an understanding of the economy as an integrated, complex enterprise.”

He adds, “This approach is grounded in understanding that productivity is less about markets and more about organizations and systems, in particular about how technology is developed and deployed to drive productivity.”

Atkinson concludes, “Few conventional economists bother to “look inside the black box” of actual organizations or industries and crossindustry systems. Yet it is there that the keys to raising productivity and the keys to the right productivity policy will be found.” He comments that “conventional economics is of little help in understanding the sources of productivity growth, much less in providing useful or actionable advice on productivity policy.”

The rest of Part II discusses how “public goods, externalities and other enterprise failures, and system interdependencies for development and adoption of productivity-enhancing tools all mean that markets alone will not maximize productivity.”

Public goods are “a good or service provided without profit to all members of a society—to increase their productivity.” Some examples are transportation infrastructure such as roads, highways, bridges, airports, seaports or the education infrastructure for K–12 and higher education. Atkinson comments,”… though public goods are necessary, they are not sufficient.”

Atkinson comments that rather than maximizing productivity companies “can maximize profits from increasing revenues or reducing costs. Many companies focus less on boosting productivity and more on increasing revenues, either by getting more customers or increasing revenue per customer by selling products or services with higher margins.”

What he does not cover is that the best way for companies to boost productivity is to transform themselves into lean companies through the adoption and implementation of lean principles, tools, and strategies.

In addition, “some industries do not have strong incentives for driving productivity because “productivity increases hurt its implementers…In such industries, workers ‘control the means of Production’ and therefore productivity is a direct threat to their jobs.”

I found his brief discussion on the effect of system interdependencies on productivity interesting in how he shows that there is a relationship between product innovation and “interdependencies that are only observable and actionable at the industry or economy level.” For example, “when Apple developed the iPod, it needed customers with broadband Internet access and it needed music to be available for purchase online. Without either, the iPod would have gone the way of the Newton (an earlier, failed Apple attempt at creating a PDA).”

Market failure can stem “from markets tending to be poor at coordinating action when multiple parties need to act together synergistically and simultaneously. These chicken-or egg challenges must be overcome for productivity-enhancing innovation to occur in many technology platforms…Unless government plays a facilitating role, relying on markets alone can mean significantly delayed implementation.”

Atkinson identifies another challenge:  “Many technology solutions require mutual adoption and coordination for them to be effectively deployed… For example, when automobiles were first developed few paved roads had been built. Only after a certain number of autos were sold was demand strong enough that the government needed to build roads. But initially cars could be driven on dirt roads that horses used, so adoption could grow gradually in the absence of government construction

In Part III, Atkins lays out a comprehensive and actionable agenda for spurring productivity growth, which can be used as a guide to tailor national productivity policy policies. This agenda includes policy recommendations…and the ways in which governments need to organize themselves to advance effective productivity policies.”

He states, “The conventional theory holds that the only thing government can do is to remove barriers and fix policy failures so that firms reacting to price signals can do whatever they may choose to drive productivity. This overly passive framework ignores the complexity and enterprise-like nature of economies, which actually require more strategic productivity policies.” He recommends that an “effective productivity policy needs to go beyond the standard limits to embrace four other key components:”

  1. Incentives, including tax policies, to encourage organizations to adopt more and newer “tools” to drive productivity…In particular, governments should use the tax code to provide incentives for acquisition of new capital equipment
  2. .Policies to spur the advance and take-up of systemic, platform technologies that accelerate productivity across industries. Many of the information technologies central to driving future productivity have chicken-or-egg network effects which mean that adoption will lag unless governments adopt smart, technology-specific policies.
  3. A research and development strategy focused on spurring the development of productivity-enabling technologies, such as robotics…Governments need to focus a much larger share of their R&D budgets on advancing technologies that will reduce the need for labor.
  4. Sectoral productivity policies that reflect the unique differences between industries. In terms of productivity and productivity policy, industries differ in significant ways…Any effective national productivity policy will need to be grounded in analysis-based, sector-based productivity strategies.

Within these four policy components, Atkinson makes some recommendations that are more controversial, such as:

Roll back policies favoring small business – “special benefits to small business and discriminatory policies that place tax and regulatory burdens only on large businesses. He recommends, “To boost productivity, governments should embrace firm-size agnosticism in all policies.” (pages 70-73)

Replace the term informal with the accurate term the illegal economy – “individuals are breaking the law by not registering their businesses and paying taxes. Informality is a drag on productivity growth, not a progressive force.” (pages 73-74)

Set a reasonable set minimum wage indexed to inflation – this helps make it more economical for organizations to substitute capital for labor” and “in some sectors may expedite the adoption of automated equipment and new technology to increase labor productivity.” (page 81)

Atkinson warns, “Countries that protect entrenched, incumbent, or politically favored industries from market-based competition only damage their own country’s productivity and economic growth potential… This limits the ability of firms at the productivity frontier to take market share away from firms with lower productivity.”

Atkinson acknowledges that “The challenge is that few governments have designed their scientific research programs explicitly around advancing technologies to drive productivity. Instead, they follow the advice of neoclassical economists that governments should not pick particular technology areas and should focus on curiosity-directed basic science… if economies are to maximize productivity growth, they need to craft technology research agendas specifically around productivity.”

In fact, Atkinson recommends that “Governments need to focus on identifying and funding many more research and engineering projects that are specifically targeted to developing Technology that can replace human labor.”

He explains, “Productivity policy cannot be fully effective unless it is grounded in a sophisticated understanding that industries differ significantly with regard to their productivity dynamics… Three key factors differentiate industries when it comes to considering productivity policy.” They are

  • Scale ? Industries differ in terms of average firm size.
  • Competition ? Industries differ in the extent to which they face competition.
  • Incentives ? The third factor is intensity of incentives for an industry to increase productivity.

This is why Atkinson recommends that “An effective national productivity policy needs to be based on an analysis of individual industries and when appropriate, broader production systems.”

In his conclusion, Atkinson recommends, “The single most important step governments can take to boost productivity is to make higher productivity the principal goal of economic policy, more important than managing the business cycle, defending liberty, or promoting equality.”

He adds, “National governments should also identify or establish one agency or laboratory whose main mission is to support development and adoption of productivity technology as well as of platform and sectoral productivity strategies. In the United States, this might be the National Institute of Standards and Technology.”

Finally, Atkinson states: “Productivity is the key to improving living standards—so policymakers should ignore conventional economists who say there is little government can do about it and instead make it the principal goal of economic policy.”

Even if you do not agree with all of his premises, recommendations, and conclusions, this is an important report that should be widely read and debated for some time to come.

 

 

This question is answered by  Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Part II of the  report, “Think Like an Enterprise: Why Nations Need Comprehensive Productivity Strategies.” He states, “Rather than think of an economy as a large market with self-interested actors transacting on the basis of price and seeking to maximize productivity, it is more accurate to conceive of an economy as a large, integrated enterprise that requires coordination of activities that individual enterprises will not effectively undertake on their own.”

 

His opinion is contradictory to that of most Anglo-Saxon nation economists, whose policies are based on two major competing doctrines vying for influence: “neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economics, neither of which supports a national productivity policy.” In a nutshell, he states, “the neoclassical economic doctrine is focused on limiting government’s role in the economy, even as neo-Keynesians see the government’s main role as managing the business cycle and supporting a fairer distribution of income.” His definitions were so simple that even non-economists like me could understand them:

 

Neoclassical ? focuses on the “managing scarce resources in such a way that maximizes the net benefit from their use, and that produces the quantity and mix of goods and services most beneficial to society.”

 

Neo-Keynesian ? is “grounded in the core belief that demand for goods and services from business investment, government spending, and consumer spending drives growth.”

 

Atkinson particularly criticizes neoclassical economists because they “do not study how societies create new forms of production, products, and business models to expand productivity; rather, they study markets to see how commodities are exchanged.”

 

He criticizes neo-Keynesian economic policy prescriptions because they “revolve around increasing government spending to keep the economy at full employment and ensuring economic fairness and redistribution, because…their goal is not productivity growth, it is full employment.”

 

Atkinson states. “Thus, the first step for any policymaker seeking to maximize the economy’s productivity is to reject the conventional neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economic advice and embrace an alternative economic doctrine grounded in an understanding of the economy as an integrated, complex enterprise.”

 

He adds, “This approach is grounded in understanding that productivity is less about markets and more about organizations and systems, in particular about how technology is developed and deployed to drive productivity.”

 

Atkinson concludes, “Few conventional economists bother to “look inside the black box” of actual organizations or industries and crossindustry systems. Yet it is there that the keys to raising productivity and the keys to the right productivity policy will be found.” He comments that “conventional economics is of little help in understanding the sources of productivity growth, much less in providing useful or actionable advice on productivity policy.”

 

The rest of Part II discusses how “public goods, externalities and other enterprise failures, and system interdependencies for development and adoption of productivity-enhancing tools all mean that markets alone will not maximize productivity.”

 

Public goods are “a good or service provided without profit to all members of a society—to increase their productivity.” Some examples are transportation infrastructure such as roads, highways, bridges, airports, seaports or the education infrastructure for K–12 and higher education. Atkinson comments,”… though public goods are necessary, they are not sufficient.”

 

Atkinson comments that rather than maximizing productivity companies “can maximize profits from increasing revenues or reducing costs. Many companies focus less on boosting productivity and more on increasing revenues, either by getting more customers or increasing revenue per customer by selling products or services with higher margins.”

 

What he does not cover is that the best way for companies to boost productivity is to transform themselves into lean companies through the adoption and implementation of lean principles, tools, and strategies.

 

In addition, “some industries do not have strong incentives for driving productivity because “productivity increases hurt its implementers…In such industries, workers ‘control the means of

Production’ and therefore productivity is a direct threat to their jobs.”

 

I found his brief discussion on the effect of system interdependencies on productivity interesting in how he shows that there is a relationship between product innovation and “interdependencies that are only observable and actionable at the industry or economy level.” For example, “when Apple developed the iPod, it needed customers with broadband Internet access and it needed music to be available for purchase online. Without either, the iPod would have gone the way of the Newton (an earlier, failed Apple attempt at creating a PDA).”

 

Market failure can stem “from markets tending to be poor at coordinating action when multiple parties need to act together synergistically and simultaneously. These chicken-or egg challenges must be overcome for productivity-enhancing innovation to occur in many technology platforms…Unless government plays a facilitating role, relying on markets alone can mean significantly delayed implementation.”

 

Atkinson identifies another challenge:  “Many technology solutions require mutual adoption and coordination for them to be effectively deployed… For example, when automobiles were first developed few paved roads had been built. Only after a certain number of autos were sold was demand strong enough that the government needed to build roads. But initially cars could be driven on dirt roads that horses used, so adoption could grow gradually in the absence of government construction

 

In Part III, Atkins lays out a comprehensive and actionable agenda for spurring productivity growth, which can be used as a guide to tailor national productivity policy policies. This agenda includes policy recommendations…and the ways in which governments need to organize themselves to advance effective productivity policies.”

 

He states, “The conventional theory holds that the only thing government can do is to remove barriers and fix policy failures so that firms reacting to price signals can do whatever they may choose to drive productivity. This overly passive framework ignores the complexity and enterprise-like nature of economies, which actually require more strategic productivity policies.” He recommends that an “effective productivity policy needs to go beyond the standard limits to embrace four other key components:”

 

  1. Incentives, including tax policies, to encourage organizations to adopt more and newer “tools” to drive productivity…In particular, governments should use the tax code to provide incentives for acquisition of new capital equipment.

 

  1. Policies to spur the advance and take-up of systemic, platform technologies that accelerate productivity across industries. Many of the information technologies central to driving future productivity have chicken-or-egg network effects which mean that adoption will lag unless governments adopt smart, technology-specific policies.

 

  1. A research and development strategy focused on spurring the development of productivity-enabling technologies, such as robotics…Governments need to focus a much larger share of their R&D budgets on advancing technologies that will reduce the need for labor.

 

  1. Sectoral productivity policies that reflect the unique differences between industries. In terms of productivity and productivity policy, industries differ in significant ways…Any effective national productivity policy will need to be grounded in analysis-based, sector-based productivity strategies.

 

Within these four policy components, Atkinson makes some recommendations that are more controversial, such as:

 

Roll back policies favoring small business – “special benefits to small business and discriminatory policies that place tax and regulatory burdens only on large businesses. He recommends, “To boost productivity, governments should embrace firm-size agnosticism in all policies.” (pages 70-73)

 

Replace the term informal with the accurate term the illegal economy – “individuals are breaking the law by not registering their businesses and paying taxes. Informality is a drag on productivity growth, not a progressive force.” (pages 73-74)

 

Set a reasonable set minimum wage indexed to inflation – this helps make it more economical for organizations to substitute capital for labor” and “in some sectors may expedite the adoption of automated equipment and new technology to increase labor productivity.” (page 81)

 

Atkinson warns, “Countries that protect entrenched, incumbent, or politically favored industries from market-based competition only damage their own country’s productivity and economic growth potential… This limits the ability of firms at the productivity frontier to take market share away from firms with lower productivity.”

 

Atkinson acknowledges that “The challenge is that few governments have designed their scientific research programs explicitly around advancing technologies to drive productivity. Instead, they follow the advice of neoclassical economists that governments should not pick particular technology

areas and should focus on curiosity-directed basic science… if economies are to maximize productivity growth, they need to craft technology research agendas specifically around productivity.”

 

In fact, Atkinson recommends that “Governments need to focus on identifying and funding many more research and engineering projects that are specifically targeted to developing Technology that can replace human labor.”

 

He explains, “Productivity policy cannot be fully effective unless it is grounded in a sophisticated understanding that industries differ significantly with regard to their productivity dynamics… Three key factors differentiate industries when it comes to considering productivity policy.” They are

 

  • Scale ? Industries differ in terms of average firm size.
  • Competition ? Industries differ in the extent to which they face competition.
  • Incentives ? The third factor is intensity of incentives for an industry to increase productivity.

 

This is why Atkinson recommends that “An effective national productivity policy needs to be based on an analysis of individual industries and when appropriate, broader production systems.”

 

In his conclusion, Atkinson recommends, “The single most important step governments can take to boost productivity is to make higher productivity the principal goal of economic policy, more important than managing the business cycle, defending liberty, or promoting equality.”

 

He adds, “National governments should also identify or establish one agency or laboratory whose main mission is to support development and adoption of productivity technology as well as of platform and sectoral productivity strategies. In the United States, this might be the National Institute of Standards and Technology.”

 

Finally, Atkinson states: “Productivity is the key to improving living standards—so policymakers should ignore conventional economists who say there is little government can do about it and instead make it the principal goal of economic policy.”

 

Even if you do not agree with all of his premises, recommendations, and conclusions, this is an important report that should be widely read and debated for some time to come.

 

 

American Manufacturing Has Declined More Than Most Experts Have Thought

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

A new report released by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) presents a strong case that manufacturing has declined more during the last decade than it did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  It’s gratifying to finally see a well-respected non-partisan “think tank” release a report based on empirical data that corroborates what those of working in the manufacturing industry have experienced, about which I have been speaking and writing since 2003.

One of the main points of the report is that during the Great Depression, we lost 30.9% of manufacturing jobs, but in the decade of 2000-2010, we lost 33.1% of manufacturing jobs.  It becomes more serious when you realize that in the Great Depression, manufacturing accounted for 43% of jobs lost and 34% of all jobs at the time, but now manufacturing only represents about 11% of all jobs, but nearly one-third of the job loss.  This percentage loss represents 5.7 million manufacturing jobs. The report states, “On average, 1,276 manufacturing jobs were lost every day for the past 12 years.   A net of 66,486 manufacturing establishments closed, from 404,758 in 2000 down to 338,273 in 2011. In other words, on each day since the year 2000, America had, on average, 17 fewer manufacturing establishments than it had the previous day.”

When you understand the multiplier effect of manufacturing jobs, creating 2-3 supporting jobs, this loss of manufacturing jobs represents 11 to 17 million jobs.  The report states, “In fact, in January 2012 there were more unemployed Americans (12.8 million) than there were Americans who worked in manufacturing (just under 12 million).”  No wonder we have the high local, state, and federal deficits that we are experiencing ? there are fewer taxpayers and more benefit collectors.

The two million manufacturing jobs we lost during the Great Recession was added to the over 3.7 million we had already lost.  After the recession ended, the report states “just 166,000, or 8.2 percent, returned. That leaves 91.8 percent of jobs to be recovered.  At the rate of growth in manufacturing jobs in 2011, it would take until at least 2020 for employment to return to where the economy was in terms of manufacturing jobs at the end of 2007.   In reality…U.S. manufacturing has been in a state of structural decline due to loss of U.S. competitiveness, not temporary decline based on the business cycle.”

It’s obvious that with unemployment at 8.3 percent, “all those jobs have not been recreated in other industries.”  If manufacturing declines further, there are no guarantees that other jobs will appear to replace those lost in manufacturing.  The authors validate what I’ve written in my book and previous articles:  “manufacturing jobs pay more; manufacturing is a source of good jobs for non-college-educated workers; and manufacturing is the key driver of innovation—without manufacturing, non-manufacturing innovation jobs (for example, research and design) will not thrive.”

For years, most economists, experts, and government officials have said that the decline in manufacturing is a natural outcome of our transformation from an industrial society to a post-industrial society. “This decline is often cited by defenders as “normal” and in line with what is happening in other countries. In this “post-industrial” view, advanced nations are transitioning from factories to services; the greater and faster the loss of manufacturing, the more successful nations are in mastering the transition.”

The authors concede that there is “some truth to the post-industrialists’ view.  Advanced economies naturally see manufacturing jobs contribute to a smaller share of total employment, since manufacturing productivity is typically higher than non-manufacturing productivity.  But normally the loss is modest and gradual, in contrast to the United States where in the last decade it was sudden and steep.”  In addition, “advanced nations do lose some lower-value-added, lower-skill, commodity-based manufacturing to lower-wage nations.   But …they also increase their demand for the higher-value-added products that developed nations should naturally produce…the process of global integration does not and should not naturally lead to the deindustrialization of developed economies, but rather to the transformation of their industrial bases toward more complex, higher-value-added production.”

These same experts have denied that manufacturing has been in decline, arguing that manufacturing became incredibly productive just like agriculture did a century earlier so that fewer workers are needed in the industry.  The authors state that “Virtually everyone makes the argument that massive manufacturing job decline is a sign of success: manufacturers are using technology to automate work and to become more efficient…Manufacturing is like agriculture” has been the dominant story.  The United States produces more food than ever, but because farming has become so efficient, it requires a very small share of U.S. workers to grow and harvest the food. So while manufacturing productivity growth may be tough on workers, job loss is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.”

It’s true that job loss could be result of increased productivity, but what these experts have ignored is that manufacturing’s share of the Gross Domestic Product (GD) declined from 15% in 2000 to 11.0% in 2009.   While manufacturing has declined as a share of GDP in the United States and some other nations, such as Canada, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom,” it is stable or even growing in many others (including Austria, China, Finland, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.)”

The ITIF report dispels the myth that increased productivity is the reason for the job loss with a review of the productivity of various manufacturing industry sectors, showing that in 2010, “13 of the 19 manufacturing sectors (employing 55 percent of manufacturing workers) were producing less than they there were in 2000 in terms of inflation-adjusted output.”

In addition, the authors assert that “the government’s official calculation of manufacturing output growth, and by definition productivity, is significantly overstated.  ” Correcting for biases in the official data, ITIF finds that from 2000 to 2010, U.S. manufacturing labor productivity growth was overstated by a remarkable 122 percent. Moreover, manufacturing output, instead of increasing at the reported 16 percent rate, in fact fell by 11 percent over the period.”  This was during a period when the U. S. GDP increased by 17 percent.

Besides, the report states that “it is not clear how productivity could be the culprit behind the large share of job loss in the 2000s when manufacturing labor productivity (as measured by the official value added data) was not substantially different in the 1990s than it was in the 2000s.  During the 1990s, manufacturing jobs fell by one percent, while labor productivity increased by 53 percent. In the 2000s, manufacturing jobs fell by 33 percent while productivity increased by 66 percent…the 2000s productivity number is actually significantly overstated, even more so than the 1990s figure. Adjusting for bias in the data, the actual productivity growth in the 2000s was just 32 percent.”

The authors provide evidence that “there are serious problems with how the U.S. government measures manufacturing output that cause it to significantly overstate output and, by extension, productivity.   In order to see how productivity and output are overstated, it is necessary to understand both concepts.”

Their explanation is too complicated to consider in this short article, but is well worth reading in the report.  They conclude “that there are substantial upward biases in the U.S. government’s official statistics and that real manufacturing output and productivity growth is significantly overstated. The most serious bias relates to the computers and electronics industry (NAICS 334)—its output is vastly overstated. Correcting for these statistical biases, we see that the base of U.S. manufacturing has eroded faster over the past decade than at any time since WWII, when the United States began compiling the statistics.”

I can substantiate this conclusion from my experience as a manufacturers’ representative for American companies who perform fabrication services, such as plastic and rubber molding, metal stamping and casting, machining, and sheet metal fabrication for other American manufacturers.  While many of the manufacturers in my sales territory of southern California may still be assembling their products in the U. S., many of the components and subassemblies they are using have been produced offshore.  Obviously, it takes fewer American workers to produce the end product because part of the work was actually done by foreign workers.

The problem is that there is no way for the government to track the value of the components and subassemblies that have been produced elsewhere from the value of the product that is sold by the American company. Therefore, the value of the whole product is counted as American productivity without deducting the value of the parts produced outside of the U. S.  You can see how American productivity becomes inflated.

I hope this report will convince the majority of economists, experts, and government officials recognize that manufacturing is truly in serious decline so that they will look at what are the main reasons:  outsourcing manufacturing offshore and the economic warfare being waged by China against the U. S.