Construction labor productivity convergence: a conditional frontier approach

Abstract

Purpose -Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context. Design/methodology/approach -Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories. Findings -The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria. Originality/value -Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.

Relation between Labour Productivity and Export Competitiveness of Indian Textile Industry: Co-integration and Causality Approach

“…LP has been defined in several ways such as the value of gross output per worker (Taymaz, 2002). A simple definition of LP in the literature is the output and an input ratio and has been used as a measurement tool to examine LP (Ma et al, 2016).…”

“…Mark defined productivity as an output of the physical or factual volume of products and services associated with the physical or factual quantities of input (Mark, 1971, p. 7). Several authors have indicated the importance of the LP to ensure the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in the world market (Ma, Liu, & Mills, 2016; Palel, Ismail, & Awang, 2016). High LP in the manufacturing industry facilitates sustainable growth and economic development of a nation.…”

Assessment of Human Productivity Drivers for Construction Labor through Importance Rating and Risk Mapping

“…Moreover, the factors were categorized into groups as presented in Table 1. Although many studies discussed labor productivity [5,[18][19][20][21][22][40][41][42], there is a gap in the literature when it comes to ranking labor productivity drivers considering their frequency of occurrence. The previous studies evaluating the labor productivity used only the level of importance without considering the frequency of occurrence of each factor.…”

Study of Significant Factors Affecting Construction Productivity Using Relative Importance Index in Indian Construction Industry

“…For example the Australian construction industry is the 3rd largest contributor to the GDP of the country (8-9% on an average), and provide employment to 9-10% of the total employment in the country [1], [3], [22]- [24]. Furthermore, it is considered to contribute 12-14% to employment by 2030 [2], [25]. Construction productivity is defined ''as a ratio of a volume measure of output to a volume measure of input use (OECD Manual)" [26,27] [27].…”

“…Furthermore, these parameters were not the only constrained to the success of any construction project. There are much more generalized and sophisticated attributes that impacts productivity of construction projects were: poor site management, continuous over time, site welfare, lack of trust, better training, measurement of productivity, availability of material, frequent design changes, scope clarity, logistics and supply chain management, and many other attributes [1], [3], [23]- [25], [30]- [32].…”