earticle

영어

The relationship between market structure and productivity is explored in this paperusing disaggregated industry data for the Korean economy. A structural VAR model isemployed to estimate the effects of a rise in market concentration on labor productivityas well as on employment and production. The sectoral analysis in this paper covers tenmanufacturing industries as well as five non-manufacturing industries such as electricity,gas and water supply; construction; and three major service sectors. Estimation results for ten manufacturing industries show that higher concentration inproduct markets leads to an increase in labor productivity in most of manufacturingindustries, which supports the Schumpeterian view on this issue. In contrast, it induces afall in employment. Moreover, output decreases except for a few industries. Thus higherconcentration rather has a negative impact on the growth of manufacturing industries. Compared to manufacturing industries, more heterogeneity is found for fivenon-manufacturing industries. Higher concentration enhances labor productivity except fortwo industries. For construction, higher concentration reduces labor productivity, whichimplies that the Arrowian view is valid for this sector. For transport, storage andcommunications, higher concentration does not have a significant effect on laborproductivity. The effect of higher concentration on production also varies substantially across non-manufacturing industries. Output increases in the sectors of electricity, gas andwater supply; and finance, insurance, real estate and business services. Output in theconstruction sector decreases. Output does not change much in the sectors of wholesaleand retail trade, restaurants and hotels; and transport, storage and communications. Focused on the output effect, empirical results of this paper suggest that by and largeproductivity-enhancing measures that lead to higher concentration in product markets maynot be so effective in raising the growth potential of each industry.