How Does Biased Technological Progress Affect Haze Pollution? Evidence from APEC Economies

Biased technological progress is the act of energy conservation and emission reduction by changing the marginal rate of substitution. In this study, we introduced renewable energy into a production function, and proposed a method of identifying biased characteristics of technological progress, based on marginal productivity theory. A panel dataset for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies from 2000-2017 was analyzed to explore the effect of biased technological progress in reducing particulate matter (PM2.5). We found that input biased technological progress tended to use more non-renewable energy. Input biased technological progress aggravated haze pollution; however, this effect decreased as the PM2.5 concentration increased. Output biased technological progress significantly reduced haze pollution in high-income economies, but increased it in low-income economies. The effect of neutral technological progress on haze pollution was the opposite of the effect from output biased technological progress. We also found that increasing renewable energy consumption and reducing energy intensity were separate effective paths for input and output biased technological progress, respectively, to mitigate haze pollution. For neutral technological progress, improving total factor productivity was an important way to mitigate haze pollution. Finally, several policy recommendations are proposed to mitigate haze pollution in APEC economies.

A Simple Course in Capital Theory: A Misunderstood Debate

This short paper is a demonstration of the difficulty with the textbook production function which uses the notion of capital as a factor of production. Because, this notion is logically incompatible with the other notion of the money value of capital needed for distribution theory. Theories of production and distribution become incompatible. Outside a one commodity world, this leads to insurmountable circular reasoning. The value of capital cannot be measured without first knowing its distributional parameters (e.g. real wage or the profit rate) and if they are known the marginal productivity theory based on the notion of the relative scarcity of capital as a factor of production is not only superfluous but meaningless. The scarcity of something which cannot be measured even in theory cannot be defined.

Productivity Theory for Industrial Engineering

Engineering is solving the pivoted problems of the state economy that are the productivity of industry and the quality of the output product. The solution to these problems is seeing by the intensification of the technological process and its structural arrangements. The intensification of the technological process has limitations due to its physics of execution. The structural arrangements of the process are limited by the technical indices. Both limitations depend on numerous physical, technical, and economic constraints. Finding the optimal solution for the pivoted problems of the industry depends on the tactical and strategic goals of the production economics. Both goals depend on the marketing environment. The tactical goal of the production process is solving by the optimization of its technological process and structural arrangements by the criterion of the maximal productivity rate of the physical process. The strategic goal is solving by the optimization of its production process by the criterion of the minimal production cost. Productivity theory considers physical productivity and gives the solution for the tactical goals of industrial engineering

WAGE POLICY IMPACT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN INDUSTRY AREAS BEKASI DISTRICT.

In the last few years, employee performance has decreased because the wages received are considered insufficient to meet the needs of a decent life. The purpose of this study was to examine and analyze those influencing wage policies and employee performance in companies in the Bekasi Regency industrial area. The study population was employees of companies in the industrial area of ​​Bekasi Regency. In accordance with structural equition modeling (SEM), a sample of 285 respondents was selected through a purposive sampling technique. Data analysis was applied by applying government regulation theory, trade union theory, labor productivity theory, wage policy theory and employee performance theory. Hypothesis testing was carried out using SEM with the Lisrel Version 8.80 application. The results showed that the direct effect of government regulations, labor unions, work productivity and living costs has a significant effect on wage policies and government regulations, labor unions, wage policies have a significant effect on employee performance and indirect effects. government regulations, labor unions, work productivity, cost of living, have a significant effect on employee performance through wage policies.

What predicts productivity? Theory meets individuals

Because they involve individual-level cognitive processes, psychological explanations of linguistic phenomena are in principle testable against individual behaviour. The present study draws on patterns of individual variation in corpus data to test explanations of productivity. Linguistic patterns are predicted to become more productive with higher type frequencies and lower token frequencies. This is because the formation of abstract mental representations is encouraged by varied types but counteracted by automation of high-frequency types. The predictions are tested for English -ly and -ness-derivation, as used by 698 individual journalists in the New York Times Annotated Corpus and 171 members of Parliament in the Hansard Corpus. Linear regression is used to model individual variation in productivity, in relation to type and token frequency, as well as several other predictor variables. While the expected effects are observed, there is also robust evidence of an interaction effect between type and token frequency, indicating that productivity is highest for patterns with many types and not-too-infrequent tokens. This fits best with a view of entrenchment as both a conservative and creative force in language. Further, some variation remains irreducibly individual and is not explained by currently known predictors of productivity.