Capital Labour Substitution in the Large-scale Food-processing Industry in Pakistan: Some Recent Evidence
Food-processing is one of the first industries developed by man. Most agricultural commodities require some sort of processing for them to be edible. In primitive societies man processed his own food using the simple mortar and pestle. With the advent of industrialisation there emerged important implications for foodprocessing technologies. The workers in the industrial and commercial sectors of urban areas required greater supplies of food. This encouraged the establishment of processing plants supplemented by storage facilities to ensure that the urban population received the food that they required. Food-processing, therefore, began to occupy a fairly predominant position in the overall industrial sector. Its importance was heightened by its strong backward and forward linkages with the rest of the economy. In a labour-surplus developing economy, where most of the labour is unemployed or underemployed, the absorption of this surplus labour force in the industrial sector is an important issue. In recent decades, there has been significant growth in the industrial sector in most developing countries, in terms of both
DERIVED DEMAND AT DISAGGREGATES: IN MANUFACTURING SECTOR OF PUNJAB
Factor demand is essentially a derived demand because a profit maximizing firm’s demand for factor is derived from demand of final product it produce. Since the firm’s optimal choice of a bundle of factors depend on the cost minimization tactic for a given level of output. The study investigates elasticities of substitution in large scale manufacturing sector of Punjab. The study employs translog cost function to examine input substitution with capital labor and raw material as inputs, over the period of 1969-70 to 1990-91. The translog cost function along with share equations are estimated for manufacturing sector at disaggregates. It turns out that labor is most responsive factor to change in factor price. The study suggests that long run economic growth could be achieved through input adjustment policies.
Did the metamorphosis from Export Processing Zones to Special Economic Zones improve the efficiency of trade enclaves in India?
In this paper, the efficiency of seven conventional Special Economic Zones in India is analyzed, by adopting a stochastic production frontier technique, for the period between 1986–1987 and 2007–2008.Results indicate that although the efficiency scores of these enclaves have improved over the years, specifically with the introduction of the SEZ policy (2000–2001), it is far below the threshold level as identified in the literature. Besides, one can also observe a discrepancy emerging between better export earning zones and efficient zones. On the determinants side, policy intervention and large geographical area, accompanied by clustering of units, are found to have impacted the efficiency scores of these enclaves positively.