Tag: tfp

Everywhere But In The Statistics

That is, of course, part of a very famous quote by Robert Solow:

You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics

http://www.standupeconomist.com/pdf/misc/solow-computer-productivity.pdf

And in a recent newsletter, Paul Krugman agrees:

…have the past few decades generally vindicated visionaries who asserted that information technology would change everything? Or have they vindicated techno-skeptics like the economist Robert Gordon, who argued in a 2016 book that the innovations of the late 20th and early 21st century were far less fundamental than those between 1870 and 1940?
Well, by the numbers, the skeptics have won the argument, hands down.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/opinion/internet-economy.html

Paul Krugman goes on to show this chart:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/opinion/internet-economy.html

I’ll tell you how to read this chart, but back up for a moment and learn about total factor productivity first:

Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is a measure of how much output an economy can produce using the same amount of inputs, like labor and capital.
In simpler terms, TFP is like a measure of how smartly an economy is using its resources to make things. It tells us how efficiently a country is using its workers, machines, and materials to create products and services.
TFP is important because it can help explain why some countries are richer than others. When a country can produce more with the same amount of inputs, it can grow faster and become richer over time.
Measuring TFP is tricky because it’s hard to tell how much of a country’s output is due to factors like capital and labor, and how much is due to other things like technology and innovation. To measure TFP, economists use complex models that take into account all the different factors that could be affecting a country’s productivity.
In the context of development economics and growth theory, TFP matters because it can help explain why some countries are able to grow faster and become richer than others. Countries that are able to improve their TFP can create more goods and services with the same amount of resources, which can lead to faster economic growth and higher living standards for their citizens.
To improve TFP, countries can invest in education and research, create better infrastructure, and implement policies that encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. By doing so, they can create a more productive and efficient economy that can grow and thrive over time.

chat.openai.com

So here’s the question to ask: did the advent of the internet allow us, as an economy, to get smarter at using our resources to make things? Paul Krugman’s chart answer this question by showing how TFP growth changed over the next twenty five years from each given date on the x-axis. So if in 1948, TFP growth was just below 2, what that means is that TFP growth over the period 1948-1973 was just below 2. So did TFP growth go up in a twenty-five year period following 1996? The chart clearly says no, it didn’t, and Paul Krugman says “Ha!“:

See the great productivity boom that followed the rise of the internet? Neither do I.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/opinion/internet-economy.html

Here’s the paragraph that really stuck out for me, though, from Paul Krugman’s column:

For the fact is that while moving information around is important, we’re still living in a material world: Most of what we consume is physical stuff or in-person services, which haven’t been drastically affected by the internet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/opinion/internet-economy.html

Huh. Let’s try to think this through:

  1. Use your own example, as I am about to do below.
  2. Do you use online services, even when it comes to consuming physical stuff or in-person services? In my case, Amazon is where I buy most of my physical stuff from, or from Amazon’s competitors. But they all have an online presence, and that is my preferred mode of shopping.
  3. I much prefer to have my food delivered home via Zomato or its competitors. My consumption of music is via online streaming services, my consumption of video is via YouTube or via OTT, I don’t even have a cable connection at home. My consumption (and creation) of the written word is almost entirely online (blogs, Kindle, Twitter, newsletters in my inbox). A fair few chunk of my classes at various colleges are online every now and then.
  4. Calling a plumber home, or an electrician, is via Urban Company, or one of its competitors. Booking flight/train tickets, booking movie tickets, paying my daughter’s school fees, transacting with my bank – I can go on, but it’s mostly online.
  5. Software has eaten, I would say, most of my world.
  6. But I should ask if I am falling prey to confirmation bias. What is decidedly offline, for me, as a consumer?
  7. I should also be asking if I am truly representative of the average Punekar, let alone the average Maharashtrian, let alone the average Indian, and still lesser an average citizen of the world.

I would say this much: I’m fairly confident that the Internet has enabled more consumption of goods and services than was the case twenty-five years ago. As a sixteen year old in 1998, I can guarantee you that reading what Paul Krugman wrote a couple of days ago would have been a very hard thing to do! And I feel fairly safe in saying that at varying margins, this is true for a lot of people in Pune, in Maharashtra, in India, and indeed in the whole world. Those margins will likely be influenced by per capita income in each country, by whether you stay in a more (or less) urbanized part of the world, and by a whole host of other factors. But as a species, a lot of our consumption of even physical goods or in-person services has been impacted by the advent of the internet.

I’m very curious to hear from you, especially if you disagree. Please tell me what I’m missing out on!

But that makes Paul Krugman’s chart even more puzzling! I’m tempted to disagree with him based on what I’ve written above, but I’m not sure how to disagree with the chart.
What about you?

Measuring GDP is hard.

Paul Krugman’s post ends with a few cool references, and since it’s behind a paywall, I’m listing them over here:

First, a nice YouTube video on washing machines and the internet:

Second, a simple explainer on TFP.

Third, a lovely book by Robert Gordon which you absolutely must read.

Final point: how to get better at measuring GDP is (and will likely continue to be for a very long time) a fascinating problem, and I will definitely write more about it in future posts. But in the meantime, if you have any recommendations about what to read/listen/view, please do share!

Notes from Does Management Matter? Evidence from India, by Bloom et al

  • Yesterday, I had linked to a paper by Bloom et al, and said that it would be a good place to start reading about productivity, particularly from an Indian point of view. Here are my notes from the paper:

  • As per Hsieh and Klenow the ratio of TFP in Indian and Chinese firms is 5(!) between the 90th and the 10th percentile
  • The quality of management, and therefore management practices, is one explanatory factor
  • Economists tend to not buy into this because they assume that profit maximization implies cost minimization
  • So in other words, if firms are not minimizing costs by adopting good management practices, it is because “wages are so low that repairing defects is cheap. Hence, their management practices are not bad, but the optimal response to low wages.”
  • In this paper, large multiplant textile firms were split into treatment and control groups. The treatment groups were given management consulting from a top consulting group, the control groups weren’t.
  • The result: “We estimate that within the first year productivity increased by 17%; based on these changes we impute that annual profitability increased by over $300,000. These better-managed firms also appeared to grow faster, with suggestive evidence that better management allowed them to delegate more and open more production plants in the three years following the start of the experiment. These firms also spread these management improvements from their treatment plants to other plants they owned, providing revealed preference evidence on their beneficial impact.”
  • So why wasn’t this being done already?
    • No need, because benchmarking was with local competition, who weren’t doing it anyway
    • Simple lack of awareness
    • A naïve belief that nothing would change by adopting these practices
  • But even within local competition, why did firms not exit?
    • Competitive pressures were heavily restricted
      • High import tariffs
      • No entry of firms by lack of external finance
      • Number of male family members
      • Lack of trust of professional managers (family owned businesses)
  • TFP in India is about 40% that of the USA, as per Caselli 2011
  • “Indian firms tend not to collect and analyze data systematically in their factories, they tend not to set and monitor clear targets for performance, and they do not explicitly link pay or promotion with performance. The scores for Brazil and China in the third panel, with an average of 2.67, are similar, suggesting that the management of Indian firms is broadly representative of large firms in emerging economies.”
  • The interventions comprised of improvements in:
    • Factory operations
    • Quality control
    • Inventory
    • Human Resource Management
    • Sales and order management
  • This was done by implementing the following steps:
    • A diagnostic phase
    • An implementation phase (this was for only the treatment group, obviously)
    • A measurement phase
  • The authors carefully consider whether the Hawthorne effect was at play, and reject the possibility.
  • ” In every firm in our sample, before the treatment, only members of the owning family had positions with any real decision-making power over finance, purchasing, operations, or employment. Non-family members were given only lower-level managerial positions with authority only over basic day-to-day activities. The principal reason seems to be that family members did not trust non-family members. For example, they were concerned if they let their plant managers procure yarn they may do so at inflated rates from friends and receive kickbacks.”
  • “A key reason for this inability to decentralize appears to be the weak rule of law in India. Even if directors found managers stealing, their ability to successfully prosecute them and recover the assets is likely minimal because of the inefficiency of Indian courts”
  • “Hence, the equilibrium appears to be that with Indian wage rates being extremely low, firms can survive with poor management practices. Because spans of control are constrained, productive firms are limited from expanding, so reallocation does not drive out badly run firms. Because entry is limited, new firms do not enter rapidly. The situation approximates a Melitz (2003)–style model with firms experiencing high decreasing returns to scale due to Lucas (1978) span of control constraints, high entry costs, and low initial productivity draws (because good management practices are not widespread).”
  • There are three reasons for inefficiency:
    • motivation problem
    • inspiration problem
    • perception problem
  • I need to read Lucas (1978) and Melitz (2003) next!

Links for 1st May, 2019

  1. “As McKinsey points out, governments, businesses and individuals will all have to embrace change and figure out the best ways to move towards digitisation — including on such basics as land records and business transparency (which could improve access to bank credit). There are also many aspects of this wave of digitisation that are not to the good—including the impact of toxic social media, the loss of privacy, and so on. The rules for this new world will have to be framed carefully to prevent business capture as well as political misuse, and to protect citizens from predatory action. What is required is to minimise the costs as much as to maximise the benefits. Still, the over-riding message is clear: The prospects of digitisation are so overwhelmingly advantageous, if not also inevitable, that those who become laggards in adapting to the new reality are the ones that will be left behind.”
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    T N Ninan (author of the excellent The Turn of the Tortoise) writes about the potential of “digital” India while reviewing a McKinsey report about the same topic. The scope, details and aspects of such a topic simply cannot be dealt with in a single post – but with that in mind, this is worth reading.
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  2. “The Right to Education Act in 2009 guaranteed access to free primary education for all children in India ages 6-14. This paper investigates whether national trends in educational data changed around the time of this law using household surveys and administrative data. We document four trends: (1) School-going increases after the passage of RTE, (2) Test scores decline dramatically after 2010, (3) School infrastructure appears to be improving both before and after RTE, and (4) The number of students who have to repeat a grade falls precipitously after RTE is enacted, in line with the official provisions of the law.”
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    That is the abstract of this paper. Also, have you read this book? Also, have you listened to this podcast? Also, keep an eye out for this Sunday’s video.
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  3. “China’s TFP surged in the 1980s following the agricultural and ownership reforms, in the 1990s following the state enterprise reforms and the creation of a modern housing market, and in the 2000s as China prepared for and was then able to exploit WTO membership.The key takeaway is that China’s one-party system deservedly has won plaudits when it has been most ambitious with regard to economic reforms and experimentation with market mechanisms. But this is not the case, for example, before the 1980s and again since 2012, when reforms were suppressed or stifled and inputs were boosted, but without any improvements.”
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    An interview that remains interesting throughout if you are a student of economics, or China and especially the intersection set. Troubling times ahead for the Chinese economy, it would seem – and on account of a variety of short term reasons, and one very important long term one – TFP.
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  4. “That was when he saw the light. Two small, black, rectangular boxes were stacked next to an outlet on the far side of the guest room, both facing the bed. From afar, they looked like phone chargers. But when Vest got closer, he realized they were cameras, and they were recording.”
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    Airbnb, technology, privacy and customer relations. A great way to learn that There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
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  5. “In 1960, 13.4% of the population age 20-74 was obese (as measured by having a Body Mass Index above 30). In 2016, 40% of the population was obese.
    In 1970, 37.1% of those age 18 and older were cigarette smokers. By 2017, this has fallen to 14.1%.”
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    Just two out of many, many interesting tidbits about America today, and America back then.