Dissertation Research: Measurement of Productivity in Car Assembly Plants

这项研究在三个重要方面与其他研究不同，这些研究记录或解释工厂或公司层面的生产率差异。首先，公司应该分两个阶段组织他们的生产过程。在第一阶段，公司决定建造什么类型的工厂。这一选择将主要影响由此产生的配置效率。在第二阶段，公司实际上是根据之前建造的类型来运营工厂。这一阶段的表现可以解释为技术效率。评估程序反映了这些连续的选择。第二，通过用行业细节补充通常的投入和产出数据，获得了更准确的生产率衡量标准。生产过程的知识不是用来直接得出结论，而是用来具体说明更复杂的生产模式。重点放在实际决策所决定的变量上。最后，生产率并不脱离生产结构。相比之下，以前的研究为资本、劳动力和中间投入指定了一个投入聚集函数，并增加了一个乘性希克斯中性生产率项。在这里，技术效率取决于所选的工厂类型。这种选择也可以被评估，并被解释为配置效率。

This study differs in three important aspects from other studies that document or explain productivity differences at the plant or firm level. First, firms are supposed to organize their production process in two stages. In the first stage, a firm decides what type of plant to build. This choice will mainly bear on the resulting allocative efficiency. In the second stage, a firm actually operates the plant conditional on the type built before. Performance in this stage can be interpreted as technical efficiency. The estimation procedure reflects these consecutive choices.Second, a more accurate measure of productivity is obtained by supplementing the usual data on inputs and outputs with industry detail. Knowledge of the production process is used not to derive conclusions directly but to specify a more sophisticated model of production. Focus is on variables the actual decisions are made over.Finally, productivity is not separated from the structure of production. In contrast previous studies have specified an input aggregator function for capital, labor and intermediate inputs, and added a multiplicative Hicks-neutral productivity term. Here technical efficiency is conditional on the type of plant chosen. That choice can be evaluated too and is interpreted as allocative efficiency.