Productivity and Technical Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from Taiwanese Information Service Industry and Agriculture
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Chen, Li-Hsu
Abstract
The main objective of this dissertation is to examine the level and the determinants of productivity and technical efficiency for information service industry and agriculture in Taiwan. In the first study, we investigate the impact of intangible capital on firm productivity, using a large panel dataset of Taiwan’s information service firms for 2006 and 2011. We also include various subcomponents of intangible capital (i.e. R&D, technology purchase, on-the-job training, marketing, software and database) into the production function all at once for identifying the relative contribution to the productivity of these firms made by different categories of intangibles during the study period. Our results indicate that the positive influence of aggregated investment in intangible capital on firm productivity level, but this contribution is lower than the contribution of labor and tangible capital. Moreover, disaggregating intangible items play different role on enhancing output and productivity, we also find significantly positive impacts on the productivity are R&D, marketing, and software and database, especially R&D. Finally, we evaluate further the relationship between intangibles and return on asset (ROA) to check the robustness of our results. We find that intangible investment can facilitate not only productivity, but also profitability. In the second study, we apply a stochastic frontier production model proposed by Battese and Coelli （1995） to estimate firm technical efficiency of Taiwan information service industry. In addition, we examine the determinants of technical efficiency and measure the effect of corporate governance mechanism on technical efficiency. We collect a balanced panel data of listed firms from Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) data set, covering the period 2000-2012. The empirical results suggest that managerial ownership and board size have a significant and positive correlation with technical efficiency. However, leverage（financial constraints）, executive compensation, larger shareholders and pledge fail to show significant impacts on technical efficiency. Moreover, for firms in our sample, R&D has a negative and significant effect on technical efficiency but increases firm size would help to improve the technical efficiency. The results show that Taiwan listed information service firms had been operating under constant returns to scale, and relied heavily on labor input and intermediate inputs. The study also provides evidence-based policy and management guidelines to promote technical efficiency and competitiveness of Taiwan information service industry. In the third study, we employ the stochastic frontier production model to estimate the technical efficiency of sugarcane production and attempt to examine the determinants of technical efficiency during the Japanese colonial period, from 1926 to 1928. The empirical results indicate that the sugarcane farms with constant return of scale fits better with the Translog function, and fertilizer is a major determinant in sugarcane production. The technical efficiencies for the farmers range from 0.21 to 0.94, with a mean of 0.69. Also, factors that make significant impacts on the production efficiency are land tenure systems, regional differences, irrigation systems, cultivation periods, cropping distance and the ratio of family labors to total labors.
Subjects
Productivity
Technical Efficiency
Intangible Investment
Corporate Governance
Information Service Industry
Sugarcane Production
SDGs
Type
thesis
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