تخصیص مجدد شغل و رشد بهره وری در یک اقتصاد سوسیالیست: شواهدی از تولیدی اسلوونی

This paper studies whether job reallocation in Slovenia, a post-socialist economy, has been associated with gains in total factor productivity (TFP). We document the importance of entry and exit in job reallocation and show that TFP has increased mainly due to existing firms' increasing efficiency and through net entry of firms. Underlying aggregate TFP growth is job destruction by state firms and reallocation of employment to private firms.

High labor market turbulence in market and non-market economies has been documented many times.1 Gross flows of jobs relative to net flows are high, persistent, fluctuate over the business cycle, and vary between countries (e.g. Messina et al., 2004 and Goos, 2003), and simultaneous job creation and destruction take place even within narrowly defined sectors, regions and firm types, indicating a high degree of firm heterogeneity. While documenting and comparing job flows has been fruitful and complementary to aggregate data, the question remains to be answered whether high gross flows of jobs are desirable. In most post-socialist countries the aggregate evidence suggests destruction of jobs due to the legacy of communism, where over-manning was the norm. A pessimistic interpretation of this aggregate pattern is that manufacturing industries in central and eastern Europe have been unable to compete on world markets after the collapse of communism and the opening of trade, and so job destruction reflects declining industries. An optimistic interpretation is that the aggregate collapse in employment hides a process of creative destruction. This would involve substantial gross job reallocation, with a decline of unproductive jobs accompanied by increases in new productive jobs. This paper investigates these two interpretations for the case of Slovenia. We first document gross job flows for the Slovenian manufacturing sector. In contrast to slowly reforming post-socialist economies where the transition process in manufacturing is characterized by little job creation and high job destruction, we find simultaneous job creation and job destruction, indicating that restructuring in Slovenia has involved a substantial reallocation process. Second, we estimate total factor productivity (TFP), using a new method to estimate production functions, due to Olley and Pakes (1996), to document the evolution of productivity and to analyze the importance of reallocation in TFP growth. Slovenia is of particular interest to study, as it has been a successful transition economy reaching a level of GDP per capita over 65% of the EU average in the year 2000. Given that aggregate data suggest substantial productivity growth, it is interesting to identify micro-economic determinants through answers to the questions: can a process of creative destruction explain Slovenia's aggregate success story; how important has job creation and destruction been in private firms compared to state firms; and is aggregate productivity growth driven by firm-specific productivity improvements or by reallocation of resources from less efficient to more efficient firms? In the next section we introduce the data set and document the basic patterns of gross job flows between 1994 and 2000. In Section 3 we estimate TFP. We then decompose TFP to illustrate the importance of net entry and reallocation in explaining TFP growth. Section 4 concludes.

This paper sheds light on whether the transition process in Slovenian manufacturing has been one of creative destruction. As in other post-socialist economies, the transition process in manufacturing has been characterized by a high job destruction rate that dominates the job creation rate, which is likely a reflection of the communist legacy of labor hoarding and firms attempting to increase efficiency levels by reducing jobs. Furthermore, the typical stylized fact of high heterogeneity between firms in terms of job flows is confirmed. Firm entry and exit have been important in the creative destruction process. More than 22% of all job creation has been due to firm entry, while more than 11% of all job destruction is accounted for by exit of firms. These figures are even higher for private and small firms, suggesting that state firms still enjoy soft budget constraints. We document substantial productivity growth mainly explained by firms becoming more efficient and entry of more efficient firms, rather than a shift in employment shares towards the more efficient existing firms. On average, the net entry process (entry minus exit) accounts for about 17% of observed aggregate productivity growth. State firms behave differently than private firms, with the former destroying jobs to become more efficient, while the latter are characterized by reallocation of employment to the more productive firms. Net entry of de novo private firms is an important component in explaining overall TFP growth. Policies that enhance the entry of de novo private firms will therefore increase productivity as are policies that restructure state firms.