Spatial Disparities in Unit Labour Costs in Food Products Manufacturing Sector

Abstract

In case of agricultural economics, an economic growth is most generally understood as long-term process of increasing agricultural production. Especially in neoclassical theory, it is determined mainly by labour productivity. According to the producer’s equilibrium theory the remuneration of labour factor should result from its productivity. If labour remuneration is greater than its productivity, the allocation can be considered as ineffective. Hence, the resulting difference should be financed from other sources. If such a situation occurs in a whole sector, then the producers benefit from the distribution of the value in the economy. The aim of this research is to examine spatial diversity of the ULC (unit labour costs) in EU’s food products manufacturing sector. Defining the ULC as a ratio of the labour remuneration to its productivity, the paper used Moran’s I statistic for identifying the spatial association. For 2008-2014 the study used information from EUROSTAT database.