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Abstract:
Since the 1970s, economists have speculated on the effects of the proliferation of new computer and communications capabilities on business structure and performance. The present analysis explores information technology's (IT)relationship to employment and firm structure by examining how IT affects the relative size of employment at auxiliary units. The analysis treats auxiliary units--establishments where employees provide support services (mainly administrative) to production establishments--as a proxy for the highest administrative levels of the organizational hierarchy. Changes in the relative size of auxiliary employment give a broad indication of IT-related changes in firm structure. Statistical analyses of 46 industries show large variations across industries in the size, sign, and statistical significance of the elasticities of auxiliary unit employment shares with respect to IT capital stock shares. We find no economy-wide trends associated with IT. There is too much variation among industries to rely on estimates obtained from pooling industry data. For the most part, sectorial trends are scarce. Only in the transportation sector do the sign and statistical significance suggest that IT related changes are similar. Ultimately, the enormous variation revealed by our results suggests that one cannot make economy-wide generalizations about the effects of IT.

Nevertheless, our results, combined with other evidence,suggest that economies of scale--gained from using IT to reduce coordination and monitoring costs--influence firm size and structure. One reason why the effects of IT are so different across industries is variation in the firm size distribution across industries prior to the IT revolution: 1) For industries with a predominance of small firms, IT-related economies of scale may encourage growth in firm size and lead to an increase in the relative size of centralized back office establishments across the industry. This appears to have occurred in the retail trade industry. 2) In some industries where large firms predominate, IT may induce greater efficiency in back-office jobs, enabling firms to reduce back office employment relative to total employment. This appears to have occurred in some of the transportation industries. 3) In industries where IT primarily substitutes for production workers, auxiliary unit employment share is likely to rise because central administration office employment tends to change less than proportionately in response to changes in overall employment. This appears to have occurred in the primary metals industry.

Abstract:
This paper examines the generation and management of solid waste (MSW) through the lens of economics. We estimate that the global burden of MSW amounted to 1.3 billion metric tons in 1990, or 0.67 kilograms of waste per person per day. Industrial countries account for a disproportionate share of world MSW relative to their share of world population, while developing countries account for a disproportionate share of the world's MSW relative to their share of world income. Cross-country and time-series analyses reveal that MSW generation is positively associated but inelastic with respect to per capita income, and positively associated and unit elastic with respect to population size. Practices for collecting, processing, and disposing of MSW vary widely across countries in accord with the nature of the waste stream and key features of the environmental and economic context. However the least efficient practices tend to be found in developing countries, where MSW poses serious environmental quality and public health threats. Although considerable evidence indicates that the generation and management of MSW is sensitive to income and price variables, natural incentives to overuse common property and the presence of intergenerational externalities both suggest that private economic behavior will not yield socially optimal outcomes in this area. Community intervention may thereby promote the social good, with evidence accumulating that favors arrangements involving the of private firms. The cost of MSW management is likely to grow faster than the pace of urbanization if urbanization outpaces the development of transportation infrastructures. Our calculations also suggest that improvements in the handling of hazardous MSW will be far less expensive in discounted terms than undoing in the future the damage being caused by current practices.