On 19 December 2005, the Foundation agreed to financially support the project presented by Profs. Juan Jesús Fernández Cainzos y Javier Prado DomínguezThe aim of this report is to analyse the processes of economic globalisation and integration and their repercussions on the organisational transformations and the factorial and productive specialisation of Spanish non-financial companies.
International economic institutions such as the OECD, the IMF or the European Central Bank have repeatedly pointed out in their annual reports that labour productivity is the main determinant of long-term increases in potential output and income levels. This has for some time now made productivity an issue of particular importance on the political and economic agendas, which is of concern not only to entrepreneurs and economic researchers, but also, among others, to corporate shareholders, trade unions and governments.
After a first approximation to the fact that Spain's productivity levels are significantly lower than those of its main economic reference areas, the research focuses on the endogenous factors of productivity and, with the help of production theory, develops an analytical tool with which to make a joint estimate of the influence of another endogenous variable, known as total or joint factor productivity (TFP).
The study covers the period 1980-2005 and uses an econometric procedure to identify and separate the different vectors affecting TFP by assigning relative influences to three basic components: technical progress and its evolution, productivity gains due to improvements in productive efficiency (indicative of the application of technology and innovation) and, finally, the importance of economies of scale resulting from the size of markets.
The research determines the degree to which the intensity of TFP growth is related to the evolution of capital accumulation and employment, as well as addressing the study of the capacity of Spanish non-financial firms to generate total factor productivity. The research, which was completed in 2007, resulted in the book "La productividad de los factores en las empresas" (Factor Productivity in Firms) published in the Economics and Business Collection of the Foundation in 2008.
