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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of biased technology on employment distribution and labor status in income distribution of China. It also testifies a threshold effect of the capital per labor and employment distribution on labor status from biased technology.

This paper presents a normalized supply-side system of three equations to measure the bias of technology in China. Linear and threshold regressions approaches are applied over cross-province panel data to investigate the influence which biased technology has on labor status under different capital per labor and employment distribution regimes.

This paper empirically shows that technology has been mostly capital-biased in China. The regression results indicate that capital-biased technology impairs labor income status and tend to modify employment distribution and labor income between industries. Furthermore, it reveals the threshold effect of capital per labor and employment distribution on the relationship between biased technology and labor status.

This paper extends the literature by explaining labor status from the perspective of biased technology and the effect of inter-industry employment distribution in China. It further explores the asymmetric effect of biased technology on labor productivity and income, which promotes inter-industry labor mobility and modifies employment distribution. This paper highlights the implications of this explanation for labor relations and human resource management.

This study aims to focus on the role of labor regulation and credit market imperfections, in addition to that of factor endowments, in determining capital intensities in Indian manufacturing.

The paper considers an alternative approach to identifying the effects of India ' s labor regulations on industrial performance. In particular, the paper uses a measure of the stringency of labor regulations across countries – one that is completely independent of the India-specific measures used by earlier studies – and examines its relationship with capital intensities across manufacturing industries. Additionally, since labor regulations are unlikely to be the only reason for imperfections in factor markets, the paper also examines whether and to what extent capital market imperfections affect capital intensities across manufacturing industries. The paper then presents a case study that seeks to ascertain whether actual capital intensities prevailing in Indian manufacturing in major industry groups from 1989 to 1996 were larger than predicted capital intensities for these industry groups based on relative factor demand functions estimated for the USA (a country with relatively less restrictive labor laws and a more developed financial system) evaluated at Indian wages. Finally, the paper uses a recently available dataset to compare capital intensities in Indian and Chinese manufacturing to investigate the behavior of these two emerging Asian economies since 1980, when they started out with relatively similar socio-economic conditions.

The paper finds that India uses more capital-intensive techniques of production in manufacturing than countries at similar levels of development (and similar factor endowments), including China. For a majority of manufacturing industries, labor freedom and capital market development are, in addition to factor endowments, important determinants of capital intensity of production techniques used. Results reveal that, controlling for factor prices, India specializes in more capital-intensive varieties within broad industry groups relative to the USA, a more capital-abundant economy.

To the best of the authors ' knowledge, such a study has not been done for any other country. The paper sheds light on the important issue regarding the use of capital-intensive techniques in manufacturing in India, which is a labor-abundant country. The role of labor regulation has been extensively debated and the paper also investigates its role along with the role played by credit market imperfections.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on technology convergence within economies of the European Union which is usable for determining the economic growth policy aimed at sustainable long‐run economic growth and the convergence of the development between EU‐member states.

Two different empirical procedures are applied by estimating the technology convergence within the European Union on Eurostat data set. The first is framework developed by Dowrick and Nguyen. The second one is the authors' original contribution to the methodology which is based on the frontier production functions.

Significant technology convergence is recognized between 15 old EU‐member states and eight new‐member states. However, the technology convergence has obviously not accelerated the convergence of gross domestic product per labor unit between exposed groups of economies. Technical inefficiency is recognized as the main source that impedes a spill‐over effect of technology convergence. Following this it is established that in the future more effort should be directed into elimination of technical inefficiency.

Presented findings can be used to arrange the economic policy measures aimed at accelerating technology development in case of European Union.

This study aims to explain the integration of innovation and climate with the economic growth Green Productivity (GP) concept. This is drawn from the integration of two important developmental strategies: productivity improvement and environmental protection. Productivity provides the framework for continuous improvement, while environmental protection provides the foundation for sustainable development. Therefore, GP is a strategy for enhancing productivity and environmental performance for overall socio-economic development.

Three variations of frameworks and econometric model were developed to measure green total factor productivity, green labour productivity and green capital productivity, and their contributions to green productivity and sustainable development; these were based on extensive and intensive growth theories.

The sustainability of higher economic growth will likely continue to be productivity driven. This will be through the enhancement of total factor productivity (TFP) as technological progress in nations that combined the three dimensions of sustainable development (economic development, environmental protection and social sustainable development via human capital development). Such an enhancement needs to emphasise the quality of the workforce, demand intensity, economic restructuring, capital structure, technical progress and environmental standards. It should be recalled that green productivity through green TFP demonstrates the sustainable development concept of progressing technologically. It will ensure the rights of the future, as well as current, generations for them to enjoy a better life.

The study fills the gaps in growth theories by developing three variations of frameworks and econometric models, and internalising pollutants emissions as private and unpriced inputs in the three models. Further, the green capital productivity model is the sole contributing model developed in this research; it has not been thought about in any previous studies. This study highlighted the green productivity that is ignored by the studies that have been awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2018.

The purpose of this paper is to perform an investigative analysis of the distribution of agricultural growth in China and the evolution of the decision mechanism.

The kernel density estimation method was used to investigate the distribution of agricultural growth in China using 1988‐2008 panel data of the 29 provinces on the mainland. A nonparametric income distribution approach was employed to decompose China's agricultural output growth into farmland accumulation, capital deepening, labor‐scale change, technical change, and efficiency change based on stochastic frontier function. A further investigation of the evolution of the decision mechanism for agricultural growth was then performed using counterfactual analysis.

The results of this analysis indicate that: from 1996, the distribution of agricultural output per worker evolved from a unimodal into a bimodal distribution; technical change is the primary impetus to distribution shift; and capital deepening and efficiency change play a dominant role in the deformation of the distribution of agricultural output per worker from a unimodal to a bimodal distribution.

The paper is an original work and its methodology makes a meaningful contribution to understanding China's agricultural growth. That is, the use of income distribution analysis method to analyze agricultural growth does not only allow a more in‐depth understanding of the gap between regional agricultural growth rates, but also makes up for the existing lack of convergence in agricultural growth in China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between redistribution, convergence and local cultural capital (as defined by culture-based development concept).

The paper infers the basic mechanism of the cultural dependence of convergence and inequality – through an empirical test for the case of the “German job miracle” during the current crisis. Two empirical questions are asked: first, is local income inequality associated with local cultural capital and second, is the negative convergence between East and West Germany during the crisis related to culturally sensitive employers’ preference for job preservation vs job loss. An OLS enquiry and two deeper estimation methods (a logit model and a 3SLS simultaneous equations model) are alternatively applied in order to triangulate the empirical results.

The findings support the existence of cultural effect on local income inequality and cultural path dependence of employers’ preferences for job preservation vs job loss in a condition of economic shock.

The paper provides both theoretical reasoning and empirical illustration of the significance of the cultural effect on human preferences which may or may not allow for redistribution and convergence between localities.

The paper questions the widely accepted view according to which distorted factor prices are the main determinant of rural unemployment and under‐employment in Brazil. It is argued that more than distorted relative prices, the very limited technological alternatives available, together with the pattern of land ownership and the “urban bias” style of the country's agricultural policies are the main forces behind the introduction of capital‐intensive processes in Brazil's more advanced agriculture, and the related problems of labour absorption.

Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context.

Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories.

The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria.

Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.