Measuring Output and Productivity Growth in Services

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Measuring Output and Productivity Growth in
Services

• Joint product of NESDB and World Bank
• Work being down by by a team from the National
  Accounts Office

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Reasons for Current Interest

• Services are a major source of employment growth
• Important part of economic infrastructure.
• Major area of innovation (primary user of ITC
  capital).
• General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
  increased interest in performance of services.
• Significant influence in competition for emerging
  business centers in global production system.

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Objectives

• Review methodology for computing output and
  productivity in services.
• Develop a methodology for cross-national
  comparisons of productivity performance in
  specific industries.
• Airlines, Communications, Banking, and Trucking.
• Valuable benchmark of performance of critical
  industries relative to trade partners.

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Problems

• Statistical system collects very little
  information on services
• Very true in Thailand
• Reporting system (surveys) dominated by
  manufacturing and goods production
• Focus on tradable goods and exports
• Hard to measure real output of services
• Hard to define unit of output
• Lack of price indexes to adjust for inflation

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Construction of Growth Accounts

• (1)
• (2)
• Where
• Q real GDP
• A TFP efficiency of factor usage
• K physical capital inputs -stock measure
• L labor inputs - adjusted for yrs school
• sk factor income shares

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Growth Accounts (2)

• Computation of factor shares
• Division of value added between capital and labor
  compensation
• Income share can be used to measure contribution
  in competitive situations
• Mixed income (self-employment) is a combination
  of labor and capital income.
• Assume labor component equal to wage of employees
• Adjust compensation by ratio of total employment
  to employees.
• Increases importance of labor in growth accounts

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Stages of Presentation

• Macroeconomic Overview
• Total Economy and major sectors
• Agriculture, Industry, and Services
• Structure of Services Sector
• Industry groupings
• General data issues
• Detailed Industries
• Productivity measures
• International comparisons

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Macro Overview
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I.Macroeconomic Overview

• Thailand has had a very limited recovery from
  1997-98 financial crisis.
• Permanent loss of output in levels context
• Much slower trend growth after crisis
• (annual LP growth 2.6 vs 6.8)
• Sharply lower rates of capital accumulation
• Faster growth of Total Factor Productivity

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Sector Performance

• Agriculture
• Small contribution to growth
• Mechanization (capital) is major source
• Industry
• Historically, most rapid growth
• Large post-crisis decline in capital contribution
• Some TFP offset
• Services
• Decline in capital contribution
• No TFP offset

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Reallocation Gains

• Low labor productivity and TFP growth in all
  three sectors
• Contribution of within-sector labor productivity
  has declined.
• Large productivity slowdown in industry and
  services.
• Large portion of aggregate productivity growth
  coming from reallocation of workers from
  low-productivity agriculture to high-productivity
  industry and services.

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Resource Reallocations
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Resource Reallocations (2)

• Definitions
• LPv labor productivity (value added)
• L employment
• wi value added share of industry i.
• ei employment share of industry i.

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II. Major Service Industries

• Unlike the situation in agriculture and industry,
  Thailand collects very little information about
  the performance of services.
• No comprehensive economic census.
• Employment estimates are available only from the
  household labor force survey
• Survey works well for major sectors
• But, respondents do not know detailed industry
  classification of their employers.

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Labor Productivity in Service Industries

• Real output measures from national accounts
• Employment estimates from LFS
• Trade, restaurants and transportation are largest
  providers of value added and employment.
• Growth is mot rapid in communications, and public
  services.
• Many industries appear to have negative
  productivity growth.
• Implausible, and suggestive of measurement
  problems.

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Output and Labor Productivity Growth, 1993-2005
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Total factor productivity

• Conversion of capital stock measures to new
  industrial classification is still incomplete
• Severe problems with factor income shares
• Labor share recorded as very low in industries
  such as wholesale and retail trade and
  restaurants.
• TFP growth is negative in many industries

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Total Factor Productivity, 1993-2005
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Overview of Service Industries Problems

• Suggestion that output and productivity growth
  are significantly understated in several service
  industries
• Unresolved conflicts with other data, such as
  Business Trade and Service Survey of NSO
• Difficult to make significant progress without
  expanded source data.

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Problems (2)

• Need for a decennial census and annual surveys of
  service industries.
• Comparable to existing data for manufacturing.
• Questionnaire can be considerably shorter
• Revenue, value added, and investment outlays are
  the critical elements.
• Would provide an estimate of employment and
  compensation on a basis that matches that of the
  production data.

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III. Four Detailed Industries

• Airlines, communications, banking, and trucking
• Important components of logistics infrastructure
  for manufacturing and exports
• Indicative of Thailands development as an
  international business center
• Attempt benchmark comparisons of performance
  relative to trading partners.

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Methodology

• Measure productivity as before, but need to
  measure output and inputs in common international
  units
• Reluctant to use either commercial exchange rates
  or PPPs as they may not be representative of
  specific industry
• Try to develop a common physical unit for output
  (e.g. airlines and communications)
• In banking, we plan to use commercial exchange
  rate.
• OK for labor, and much of capital is purchased in
  a common global market.

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I. Airlines

• Case study of international comparison
• Can define a unit of output as a ton kilometer
  (aggregate passenger and freight)
• Avoids need to convert from one national currency
  to another
• Data are available from individual airlines
• Can basically match the data in Thailands
  national accounts.

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Alternative Measures of Capital Input

• Net capital stock of NESDB
• Cumulative of investment with assumed rate of
  depreciation
• Issues of leasing and retirement of planes
• Available capacity tons of passengers and freight
• Available ton-kilometers
• Number of planes aggregated by relative price.

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International Comparisons
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International Comparisons

• Output is a weighted average of passengers (58)
  and passenger ton-kilometers (42)
• Weights are from a regression of airline revenues
  as a function of passengers and passenger ton
  kilometers
• Capital is based on available ton-kilometers

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Overview

• Thai Airs labor productivity is below that of
  the United States an Singapore
• Currently offset by lower labor cost
• Gap is slowly widening for both Thai Air and
  Malaysia Air
• Capital productivity is comparable to that of
  Singapore Airlines
• Overall TFP gains very similar for Thai and
  Malaysia

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Overview (2)

• Most serious problem is a lack of any adjustment
  for quality.
• U.S. productivity gains in recent years may have
  been at expense of service quality
• How measure quality?
• Overall performance measures may camouflage some
  more specific problems.
• Thai Air has a high load factor on regional
  flights, but very low for long distances
• Harder to compete outside of region.

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Overview (3)

• Thailand has a significant labor cost advantage
• Thai Air has a relatively high rate structure
• Revenue per passenger kilometer

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2. Communications

• Industry of very rapid innovation
• Mobile phones
• Broadband and the internet
• Increased competition
• Data within Thailand are very incomplete
• Grouped with postal service in national accounts
• Currently relying largely on data from
  International Telecommunications Union

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Output Measurement

• Three broad activities of fixed line service,
  mobile phones and broadband
• Current information on broadband service is
  incomplete for many countries
• Emphasize fixed line and mobile
• Weigh physical indicators of output (subscribers)
  by share of revenue.
• Extraordinarily rapid growth for Thailand.

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Telecommunications Output
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Labor Productivity

• Mobile systems are much cheaper to construct than
  fixed line and less labor intensive.
• Questions about employment data in recent years
• Reported numbers are volatile and may not
  consistently include all of the major companies
• Emergence of mobile led to very rapid rise in
  labor productivity
• Less dramatic for the United States, which had a
  large investment in fixed lines.

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Labor Productivity
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Capital

• National Accounts Office does not produce a
  measure of capital stock at level of
  telecommunications.
• Not sure of source for report to ITU and the
  coverage of that data
• Expect large gains in capital productivity in
  those countries where mobile substitutes for
  building a fixed line system.
• In Thailand, mobile phone subscribers far
  outnumber fixed line subscribers (33 million
  versus 7 million).

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Capital Productivity
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Overview

• Thailands telecommunications industry has
  developed at an extraordinary rate with very
  large efficiency gains by relying on a mobile
  system
• Refinement of our estimates is dependent upon
  documenting the reliability of the data
• Uncertain about the measures of employment and
  capital investment
• If coverage is incomplete, the efficiency gains
  would be overstated.

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3. Banking

• Difficult to measure output of financial services
  industry
• No simple unit of service
• Banks cross-subsidize some services, providing
  free depositor services to attract funds.
• Cannot use revenue shares to aggregate the
  different type of services
• Industry is also distorted in Thailand by
  aftermath of financial crisis.

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Output Measures

• Currently we focus on traditional commercial
  banking
• New services are still a small share of total
  revenues
• Emphasize transactions in the area depositor
  services and loan activities
• Three available measures of deposit transactions
  total number of accounts, check transactions, and
  ATM transactions
• Checks are not an important payment mechanism in
  Thailand
• Two measures of loan activities total number of
  loans and number of credit cards

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Output Measures (2)

• Obtain weights to combine the various measure by
  surveying banks for their experience.
• Number of transactions per deposit account
• Relative allocation of costs between loan and
  deposit sides of business.
• Current estimates are only illustrative
• Transactions measure implies much greater
  recovery after 1997-98 crisis than current
  estimates in national accounts.

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Employment and Capital Inputs

• Employment steadily declined after 1997
• 30 decline between 1997and 2002
• Increases only in last few years
• Measure reported in the Labor Force Survey is
  higher and more volatile.
• Estimate of capital stock is obtained from
  National Accounts Office.
• Declined by about 20 percent between 1997 and
  2002 growing in recent years.

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Overview

• In contrast to national accounts measure, the
  transactions-based estimate implies strong
  productivity gains in last decade.
• Large gains in labor productivity probably
  reflect increased use of ITC capital and
  technology.

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4. Trucking

• Important part of logistics system.
• Very little freight is handled by the railway.
• Output is measured as ton-kilometers of intercity
  freight.
• Previously estimated from surveys of trucks on
  major routes.
• Recently abandoned because of complaints about
  traffic backups.
• Currently extrapolated from data on production of
  different types of commodities.

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Trucking (2)

• No available estimate of employment
• LFS very volatile
• Assume one driver per truck, but have no means of
  estimating other workers
• Capital stock can be estimated from motor vehicle
  registration data

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Preliminary Productivity Estimates

• Shipments implies much faster growth than
  reported in the national accounts.
• 4.8 percent per annum ro 1995-2005, compared with
  NA estimate of 0.6 percent.
• Employment as measured by number of trucks, grew
  at 0.5 percent per annum.
• Capital stock has grown at 2.5 percent.
• Shift to larger trucks for intercity freight
• Modest growth in TFP 0.7 per annum

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Summary

• Four these four industries, we can construct
  measures of output and economic efficiency.
• Limited by lack of data
• Much of the information came from outside the
  government statistical system
• In general, growth of output and productivity is
  considerably better than implied by service
  sector of national accounts.
• We need to do more work for the international
  comparisons
• Can be done for airlines and telecommunications
• Comparisons for banking and trucking will be more
  restricted.

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Summary (2)

• Extension of analysis of other service industries
  is restricted by the lack of statistical
  information comparable to that of industry.
• Many of the statistical problems could be
  resolved by expanding the economic censuses and
  annual surveys currently being done for good
  production to services.
• Most of Thailands future growth and employment
  will be in services, but little is known about
  the sectors performance.