Showing posts with label creative destruction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creative destruction. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

27/5/15: Creative Destruction vs Subjective Individual Wellbeing


There is one persistent question in economics relating to the issues of aggregate income attained in the economies: the connection between that income and happiness. In other words, does higher per capita GDP or GDP growth increase happiness?

A new paper by Aghion, Philippe, Akcigit, Ufuk, Deaton, Angus and Roulet, Alexandra M., titled "Creative Destruction and Subjective Wellbeing" (April 2015, NBER Working Paper No. w21069 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21069) looks at this matter. The authors "…analyze the relationship between turnover-driven growth and subjective wellbeing, using cross-sectional MSA level US data. We find that the effect of creative destruction on wellbeing is

  1. unambiguously positive if we control for MSA-level unemployment, less so if we do not; 
  2. more positive on future wellbeing than on current well-being; (
  3. more positive in MSAs with faster growing industries or with industries that are less prone to outsourcing; 
  4. more positive in MSAs within states with more generous unemployment insurance policies."


A bit more colour.

Existent literature

As noted by the authors, "…the existing empirical literature on happiness and income looks at how various measures of subjective wellbeing relate to income or income growth, but without going into further details of what drives the growth process. In his 1974 seminal work, Richard Easterlin provides evidence to the effect that, within a given country, happiness is positively correlated with income across individuals but this correlation no
longer holds within a given country over time."

This is known as the Easterlin paradox and there are several strands of explanations advanced: "…the idea that, at least past a certain income threshold, additional income enters life satisfaction only in a relative way… Recent work has found little evidence of thresholds and a good deal of evidence linking higher incomes to higher life satisfaction, both across countries and over time. Thus in his cross-country analysis of the Gallup World Poll, Deaton (2008) finds a relationship between log of per capita GDP and life satisfaction which is positive and close to linear, i.e. with a similar slope for poor and rich countries, and if anything steeper for rich countries. Stevenson and Wolfers (2013) provide both cross-country and within-country evidence of a log-linear relationship between per capita GDP and wellbeing and they also fail to find a critical "satiation" income threshold.3 Yet these issues remain far from settled…"

One common problem with all of the literature on links between income and wellbeing is that "…none of these contributions looks into the determinants of growth and at how these determinants affect wellbeing. In this paper, we provide a first attempt at filling this gap."

Theory:

To address this problem, the authors "look at how an important engine of growth, namely Schumpeterian creative destruction with its resulting flow of entry and exit of firms and jobs, affects subjective wellbeing differently for different types of individuals and in different types of labor markets."

The authors "develop a simple Schumpeterian model of growth and unemployment to …generate predictions on the potential effects of turnover on life satisfaction. In this model growth results from quality-improving innovations. Each time a new innovator enters a sector, the worker currently employed in that sector loses her job and the firm posts a new vacancy. Production in the sector resumes with the new technology only when the firm has found a new suitable worker. …In the model a higher rate of turnover has both direct and indirect effects on life satisfaction. The direct effects are that, everything else equal, more turnover translates into both, a higher probability of becoming unemployed for the employed which reduces life satisfaction, and a higher probability for the unemployed to find a new job, which increases life satisfaction. The indirect effect is that a higher rate of turnover implies a higher growth externality and therefore a higher net present value of future earnings: this enhances life satisfaction."

Four theoretical model predictions are:

  1. "Overall, a first prediction of the model is that a higher turnover rate increases wellbeing more when controlling for aggregate unemployment, than when not controlling for aggregate unemployment."
  2. "…higher turnover increases wellbeing more, the more turnover is associated with growth-enhancing activities. 
  3. "…higher turnover increases wellbeing more for more forward-looking individuals." 
  4. "…higher turnover increases wellbeing more, the more generous are unemployment benefits".

Data:

The authors test theoretical predictions based on actual US data.

"Our main finding is that the effect of the turnover rate on wellbeing is unambiguously positive when we control for unemployment. This result is …remarkably robust. In particular it holds: (i) whether looking at wellbeing at MSA-level or at individual level; (ii) whether looking at the life satisfaction measure from the BRFSS or at the …Gallup survey; (iii) whether using the BDS or the LEHD data to construct our proxy for creative destruction."

"We also find that the positive effect of turnover is stronger on anticipated wellbeing than on current wellbeing. On the other hand, creative destruction increases individuals' worry - which reflects the fact that more creative destruction is associated with higher perceived risk by individuals."

"…When interacting creative destruction with MSA-level industry characteristics; we find that the positive effect of turnover on wellbeing is stronger in MSAs with above median productivity growth or with below median outsourcing trends."

"Finally, we find that higher turnover increases wellbeing more in states with unemployment
insurance policies that are more generous than the median."

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

9/9/2014: Creative Destruction and Individual Well-Being


Here's a very interesting paper by Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Angus Deaton, and Alexandra Roulet, titled "Creative Destruction and Subjective Well-Being" (April 7, 2014, http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1259555.files/Papers%20Spring%202014/AGHION%20April%202014.pdf)

The paper looks at "the effect of Schumpeterian creative destruction on subjective well-being. We
highlight theoretically the two opposite forces that creative destruction has on well-being: a negative
force through the higher risk of displacement and a positive one through higher growth expectations."

The displacement comes from the entry by an 'innovator' that displaces currently employed worker(s). The new technology is only enabled when a new worker is hired, and this results in higher output thereafter. So "more turnover translates into a higher probability of becoming unemployed which in turn reduces life satisfaction". But higher turnover means higher growth and this implies higher future earnings which "enhances life satisfaction."

Beyond this, the authors distinguish two types of workers, and as the result derive two different net effects.
"A second prediction is that higher turnover has a less positive (or more negative) effect on life satisfaction for more risk-averse individuals."

Applying the model to data, "Empirically, we find evidence supporting the existence of these two effects. We measure subjective well-being … [and] also use a measure reflecting individuals’ current ”worry”. For creative destruction we use establishment and job turnover following Davis et al (1996). The turnover data are MSA-level panel data from the Business Dynamics Statistics."

In more details: "We find that the effect of creative destruction on life satisfaction is unambiguously positive when we control for MSA level unemployment, less so when we do not. The magnitude of the effect is similar than that of the unemployment rate (but of opposite sign) and stronger when focusing on anticipated well-being (the growth expectation effect); yet creative destruction is also associated with increased worry (the displacement risk effect). Consistent with our model, we also find that creative destruction has a more positive effect on life satisfaction in states with a more generous unemployment insurance policy."


Note: Thanks to Liam Delaney for spotting this one earlier on twitter.

Friday, September 27, 2013

27/9/2013: Incumbent Subsidies v Innovation: US evidence on R&D subsidies

I wrote about R&D tax credits before and the fact that some recent research has been throwing a spanner in the works of the Governments around the world actively subsidising R&D and innovation. You can read my musings on the subject here:
http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/08/2182013-irelands-potemkin-village.html
and
http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/06/662013-irish-school-of-growthology.html
and
http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/03/3132013-r-and-tax-policy-income-tax-or.html

New research on the same just out from the Bank of Finland.

"Innovation, Reallocation and Growth" is a paper recently published by the Bank of Finland (Discussion Papers 22, 2013 http://www.suomenpankki.fi/en/julkaisut/tutkimukset/keskustelualoitteet/Documents/BoF_DP_1322.pdf) authored by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Nicholas Bloom and William Kerr.

From the abstract (emphasis mine):

"We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A key feature is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the parameters of the model using detailed US Census micro data on firm-level output, R&D and patenting. The model provides a good Öt to the dynamics of firm entry and exit, output and R&D, and its implied elasticities are in the ballpark of a range of micro estimates."

"We find industrial policy subsidizing either the R&D or the continued operation of incumbents reduces growth and welfare. For example, a subsidy to incumbent R&D equivalent to 5% of GDP reduces welfare by about 1.5% because it deters entry of new high-type firms."

"On the contrary, substantial improvements (of the order of 5% improvement in welfare) are possible if the continued operation of incumbents is taxed while at the same time R&D by incumbents and new entrants is subsidized. This is because of a strong selection effect: R&D resources (skilled labor) are inefficiently used by low-type incumbent firms. Subsidies to incumbents encourage the survival and expansion of these firms at the expense of potential high-type entrants. We show that optimal policy encourages the exit of low-type firms and supports R&D by high-type incumbents and entry."

Or put differently, let the creative destruction work. Or even incentivise the creative destruction working (not my preference, though)...