O14 - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of TechnologyNávrat zpět

Too much of a good thing can ultimately become detrimental. Is this the case in the manufacturing industry's carbon governance under the guise of digitization? This study examines the non-linear effect of low-carbon environmental governance at the provincial level in China's manufacturing sector which is the first of its kind. Using the slacks-based measure data envelopment approach (SBM-DEA), this study assesses changes in environmental governance performance over time, accounting for desirable and undesirable outputs. The findings indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between manufacturing digitization and low-carbon environmental governance performance in China. This suggests that digitization improves environmental outcomes initially, but excessive digitization causes adverse environmental impacts due to increased energy use, resource depletion and waste production. It offers insights into the complicated interplay of benefits and challenges in manufacturing digitization and its implications for achieving sustainable, low-carbon development in China. It highlights the importance of thoughtful digital transition to support low-carbon development goals.

We investigate the effects of trade openness and international financial inflows (including foreign direct investment, remittances and foreign aid inflows) on Africa's productive capacity and how governance institutions are moderating these effects. We adopt the dynamic system GMM modelling framework and the Bun and Carree (2005) bias-corrected least square dummy variable estimator with a panel of 43 African economies. We also use the Driscoll and Kraay (1998) standard error fixed effect estimation, which controls for cross-sectional dependence to provide robustness check. We find that trade openness and the various components of international financial inflows are significant drivers of productive capacity in Africa, and that governance institutions are moderating and enhancing their effects. We also find that renewable energy consumption, human capital development and infrastructure development are promoting Africa's productive capacity. We highlight the policy implications of these findings, which among others, encourage policymakers and leaders in Africa to focus on policies that can enhance cross border trade, attract international financial inflows and entrench high-quality institutions.

The paper estimates the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour under biased technical change in the manufacturing sector in the Czech Republic. We use a dataset covering the period 1995-2019 and a 2-digit industry level, from NACE10 to NACE33. We find industry-level elasticities to be 0.19 and 0.94; therefore, labour and capital seem to be gross complements rather than substitutes across all manufacturing sectors. In the core industries of the Czech manufacturing sector, the elasticity is below average. Even if these core sectors have high and increasing labour costs (except NACE29, where the labour costs are below average), they do not replace labour with capital at a higher pace. This cannot be explained by the direction of technological bias because it is not capital-augmenting. On the other hand, our findings are in line with the literature, as most studies on transition countries report low estimates for the elasticity.

This paper analyses the geographical concentration of the industry sector according to technology intensity of industries. The analysis of spatial distribution employs a database including information on the number of plants at the 2-digit level of sector aggregation in the period 1997-2016. We estimate parameters for a spatial panel data analysis with random and fixed effects in order to examine two related research questions: (1) to what extent are the effects of internal economies of scale present in the technology-intensive industries; and (2) which types of external economies of scale are used by different industries depending on technology intensity. Our results indicate that the regional industrial structure of Slovakia has become more diverse. As a consequence of the phase of economic integration, some of the regions have been integrated into global production networks and maintain high levels of specialisation.

The competitive ability of the processing industry in the SR occurs most often in classical types of production characterised by lower level of added value. Commodities with a low added value participate in worsening the balance of trade of the SR. The high export demand of industrial production also contributes to it. The changes in branch structure of processing industry of the SR are continuously reflected in a change of foreign trade structure. Its orientation is on the products less demanding and primarily on raw materials and energetic sources. In spite of this there is visible the tendency to be focused on exports in lower added value products in Slovak processing industry. The worsening of Slovak processing industry status is visible in the commodities where the export is confronted with new industrialized countries production (mainly in textile industry) but also with countries so-called "mono-cultural" (food, drinks, tobacco). In the given examples there is a strong tendency in the SR to lower the trade volume with these commodities. The analysis results show the increase of traffic means in Slovak foreign trade. Automobile industry is coming to the top and it has become the basic branch of the Slovak industry. The trend of development is from one point of view positive not only from the point of view of volume but also from the investment structures from the side of big investors. But on the other hand the SR has become, by this development, more sensible to fluctuation on the world markets. Processing industry is behind in its competitive ability in comparison with high-tech branches. The causes of it are low expenditures for research and development that should be used in these branches and they subsequently cause the low level of creating the level of added value. Marked falling behind in competitive ability of these branches is shown in their low shares in a foreign trade.

Empirical research on the differences between unit values in the EU's trade with the Czech Republic and the intra-EU average has shown a significant changes. The comparative level of manufacturing products imported from the Czech republic has increased, the comparative level of products exported to the Czech republic has decreased. The price-gaps, inherited from the communist regime have been substantially reduced. Most remarkable changes of the comparative prices took place in trade with products of metalworking industries. The favourable development of price relations in the Czech foreign trade has been an important element underlying balance of payments performance, it has contributed to the nominal and real improvements of Czech krown and shoud play an importent role in the process of convergence. The analysis is based on Eurostat Comext Database.