The Influence Of Age Structure Of Labor Force And National Cultural Characteristics On Total Factor Productivity Growth In Asia

Nowadays,a number of countries are facing of the problem caused by demographic changes such as decline in productivity,aging populations and economic recession.Even though the potential downsides of demographic changes are generally identified by economists,there are relatively few professionally empirical researches conducted in terms of demographic change.Also,the previous research object is extensive but not specific,and the data are old.The author proceeds from the reality and makes a deeper study on the impact of rationalization of population composition on the growth of total factor productivity in Asia.In detail,this research focus on revealing whether the age structure in working population and national culture in five dimensions could explain the variation in TFP,from 1950 to 2015 in Asia.Specifically,it will take advantage of the econometric approach to detecting whether any outflow from age group of 40 – 49(reference age group)will give rise to decline in total factor productivity,and how cultural dimension could impact on total factor productivity growth positively or negatively in details.In terms of the first assumption of demographics,the empirical result from regression analysis could make an affirmative verdict.To be more specific,any outflow of working age population from W40(40 – 49)will have a negative impact on total factor productivity growth.Combined with the aging process of the society and the declining quality of the labor force,the rationalization of the age structure of the labor force does have an impact on the growth of total factor productivity.Previously,there have been many studies and analyses on innovation performance from the perspective of productivity.While this paper focus on innovation perspective from the cultural dimension to make a continuous analysis on the core driving factors for the improvement of innovation capacity at the national level.To fulfill this target,Geert Hofstede(2003)comes up with a theory about five cultural dimensions to identify the relationship between national culture and potential innovation performance,this research also aims to measure the potential impact of each cultural dimension to innovation performance in country level.From the result,in terms of the single influence of national cultural characteristics,the representative results shows that the Individualism(IDV),Power Distance(PDI),Long Term Orientation(LTO)have negative impact on TFP growth,while the high level of Masculinity(MAS)and Uncertainty Avoidance Index(UAI)are positive to total factor productivity growth.Which is different from previous study.When assessing the cross effect of working age population and cultural dimensions,due to different age groups,people's consciousness affects their behavior differently.For the perspective of policy maker,based on the current results,the development and improvement of innovation performance should emphasize on Individualism,Uncertainty Avoidance and Power distance,which also could be regarded as most effective and practical dimensions to be adjusted by policy maker.