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This chapter provides an empirical assessment of the effects of infrastructure provision on structural change and aggregate productivity using industrylevel data for a set of developed and developing countries over 1995–2010. A distinctive feature of the empirical strategy followed is that it allows the measurement of the resource reallocation directly attributable to infrastructure provision. To achieve this, a two-level top-down decomposition of aggregate productivity that combines and extends several strands of the literature is proposed. The empirical application reveals significant production losses attributable to misallocation of inputs across firms, especially among African countries. Also, the results show that infrastructure provision has stimulated aggregate total factor productivity growth through both within and between industry productivity gains.

There is growing empirical evidence that firm heterogeneity is technologically non-neutral. This chapter extends the Gandhi, Navarro, and Rivers (2020) proxy variable framework for structurally identifying production functions to a more general case when latent firm productivity is multi-dimensional, with both factor-neutral and (biased) factor-augmenting components. Unlike alternative methodologies, the proposed model can be identified under weaker data requirements, notably, without relying on the typically unavailable cross-sectional variation in input prices for instrumentation. When markets are perfectly competitive, point identification is achieved by leveraging the information contained in static optimality conditions, effectively adopting a system-of-equations approach. It is also shown how one can partially identify the non-neutral production technology in the traditional proxy variable framework when firms have market power.

Polish agriculture is one of the main sectors of the national economy that, under the influence of political transformations and European integration, is subject to measures stimulating its development. The instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have been an important supporting stimulus.

This chapter aims to evaluate the significance of the common agricultural policy to the growth and development of agriculture and to structural transformations therein triggered primarily by the influx of additional CAP funds.

The agricultural sector was examined together with its selected characteristics in the context of CAP instruments' impact after 2004. Data included the streams of funding for Polish agriculture and indicators illustrating changes in structural features, economic performance and productivity of production factors. The indicators included changes in the number, structure and potential of farmsteads, changes in the level of employment in agriculture, this sector's share in total gross value added, profitability of farmsteads, capital expenditure level and changes in labour and land profitability compared with changes in the level of employment and agricultural production intensity. They were calculated based on data from EUROSTAT, Statistics Poland and Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).

The outcomes confirm that common agricultural policy has contributed to create development processes in Polish agriculture. Changes in the sector affected structural characteristics, production factors productivity and the income of agricultural producers. Since Poland joined the European Union (EU), the percentage of agricultural workers declined by 8.4 p.p. and the number of farms decreased by nearly 30%. These changes were accompanied by a nearly twofold increase in agricultural labour productivity, 50% increase in land productivity and the profitability of land increased by 43%.

This chapter applies the five drivers of productivity framework to regional microdata for Egypt and extends it by introducing an index of industrial clusters as an explanatory factor of the productivity performance of local private sector firms. Applying structural equation models, the geographic concentration of sectoral economic activity is found to have a positive and statistically significant effect on labor productivity. The transmission mechanism is conjectured to be the positive spillovers that are created, which local firms can tap into. In contrast, a higher concentration of skilled workers in an industrial sector in a region is associated with lower levels of labor productivity – a finding that suggests there may be structural deficiencies in the allocation of skilled workers. Regional policy should focus on net investments in gross capital formation throughout the country, for which the national and regional governments should improve how public investments are managed and the institutional framework – including the rule of law, bureaucracy and red tape, conflict of interest, transparency, and governance – so that private investment (both local and foreign) may substantially increase.

The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.

The main aim of this chapter is to systematize observations regarding changes in entrepreneurship in Serbia during the previous decade, having in mind some key factors such as high-impact low-probability (HILP) events, dynamic development in the sphere of information technologies (IT), and foreign direct investments (FDI). The choice of these factors was made in accordance with the fact that there were no significant changes in other external factors in the sphere of entrepreneurship (regulatory framework, financial conditions, and socio-political instability). This chapter discusses the assumptions that HILP events and FDI can have both positive and negative impacts on individual sectors or agglomerations of entrepreneurship, while only positive impacts are attributed to IT development. Using official databases and annual financial and business reports given by entrepreneurial agencies and micro and small enterprises we created a set of reports that indicate the strength and direction of the influence of the mentioned factors and their consequences in the sphere of entrepreneurship at the level of Serbia and selected cities, based on the fact that the entrepreneurial ecosystem in those cities faced greater than average challenges. The selected ratios indicate changes in the growth rate of the entrepreneurship sector (number of entrepreneurs and employees) as well as in the improvement of its competitiveness (productivity, assets, and profit per employee).

Homelessness has many causes and also is stigmatized in the United States, leading to much misunderstanding of its causes and what policy solutions may ameliorate the problem. The problem is of course getting worse and impacting many communities far removed from the West Coast cities the authors examine in this study. This analysis examines the socioeconomic variables influencing homelessness on the West Coast in recent years. The authors utilize a panel fixed effects model that explicitly includes measures of healthcare access and availability to account for the additional health risks faced by individuals who lack shelter. The authors estimate a spatial error model (SEM) in order to better understand the impacts that systemic shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have on a variety of factors that directly influence productivity and other measures of welfare such as income inequality, housing supply, healthcare investment, and homelessness.

The growing use of internet communication technology has led to increased economic growth across the world, and this chapter seeks to assess the case of Czechia. The study also examines the changing employment distribution in the labour market with the growing influence of information and communication technology (ICT). The multiple indicators and multiple causes model as well as changes in employment or earnings shares of occupations are used for the analysis. The findings show that increased use of ICT contributes to growth in GDP and employment. It also shows that ICT has contributed to rising labour and factor productivity through increased innovation. There is also increased demand for highly educated labour leading to growth in employment in high skill occupations, while the share of low and middle skill occupations declines. The situation, however, does not indicate job polarisation in the labour market and total employment is still increasing. The study also finds that investment and use of ICT has led to progressive development in the human development index of the Czech Republic and a decline in the gender inequality index.