经济 外文翻译 外文文献 英文文献 软件产业和印度的经济发展

1、外文翻译之二the software industry and indias economic developmentasish arora suma athreyeamerican indianinformation economics and policy, vol.1(2001)4. the growth of software and human capital formation: public and private investments in training and the rewards to an engineering educationthough india has

2、 one of the largest numbers of scientists and engineers it also has some of the lowest rates of literacy in the world with 52% of the total working population that cannot read or write. as table 3 showed, despite the large total numbers of engineers, the numbers of engineers per million of populatio

3、n was smaller in india compared to several other countries. there is correspondingly an over-reliance on the existing stock of trained but underemployed engineers, for whose services a slowly growing and protected economy could not generate adequate demand.a very large fraction of the employees of i

4、ndian software firms are graduates of engineering college. most of the indian software firms interviewed by arora et al. (2000) reported hiring only engineers. data from a sample of nearly 60 software firms indicates that over 80% of their employees had an engineering degree. only 13% were non-engin

5、eers trained in software development.14 in interviews, many firms categorically stated that they hired only engineers.this preference for engineers was unremarkable, and of little consequence, at the start of the industry, when its demand was small relative to the annual supply. india graduates over

6、 160,000 engineers of all varieties. the sharp and sustained growth of the indian industry has meant that by 1998-99, the number of employees has climbed to nearly 250,000, and estimates suggest that this may have crossed 400,000 in 2000-2001. if the industry continued to grow at 50% per year, then

7、even allowing for increases in productivity, it appears that the software industry is going to run out of engineers to hire. (see arora, asundi and fernandes, 2000 for more details.)these projections are consistent with other evidence. wages in the software industry have grown at over 20% per annum

8、and attrition rates are high. when asked in 1998-99 to list the top 3 problems they faced, more than half of all firms (out of a sample of over 100 firms) irrespective of age, size or market orientations (either export or import) selected manpower shortage and employee attrition as the most serious

9、problem affecting them (arora, et. al, 2000). despite paying substantially above indian standards, virtually all firms find it difficult to attract and retain talented software developers.the public policy response has been to emphasize increased investments in engineering colleges, increased emphas

10、is on information technology in engineering curricula and the creation of institutes of information technology (iiit) along the lines of the better known indian institutes of technology. though superficially reasonable, this is not the answer. these investments are unlikely to have a significant aff

11、ect on supply in the short run. moreover, expanding such capacity faces the problem that the growth of the software industry has tended to siphon off engineering masters and phd students. a recent report on graduate engineering education in india noted that the number of engineering phds produced ha

12、s fallen from 675 in 1987 to 375 in1995. concurrently, the number of engineers with postgraduate training has also risen only slowly, from a little over 12,000 in 1987-89 to a little over 17,000 in 1990-92. surveys of indias premier technological institutions-the indian institutes of technology (iit

13、s) show that a very large fraction of postgraduates from those institutions enter the information technology (it) sector, in some cases as many as 90%!moreover, table 6 below shows that the bulk of the indian engineering capacity is located in just a few states maharashtra, karnataka, tamil nadu and

14、 andhra pradesh. further, the table also shows that the bulk of the capacity here is accounted for by “self financed” colleges, where students receive a much smaller subsidy, if at all, compared with the state financed colleges. an interesting and hitherto unexplored question is the reason that the

15、organizational innovation of self- financing colleges has not diffused to other parts of the country. we can only speculate that this has to do partly with cultural and political factors, and partly with the lower returns to investments in human capital in other parts of the country. not coincidenta

16、lly, the south and west are also economically more advanced.we believe that although investments in engineering education are necessary, a bigger part of the solution lies in a more efficient use of existing human capital resources. implicit in the discussion thus far is that only engineering gradua

17、tes are well suited to perform the tasks required. this assumption appears to have shaky foundations. first, the bulk of the engineers working in the industry are not, in fact, trained in software engineering, computer science or related disciplines. further, a very significant fraction of the work

18、involves developing and refining business applications, databases and the like. indeed, initially a great of the work involved porting applications from one computing platform, typically a mainframe, to another platform such as a unix platform. this work requires familiarity with software developmen

19、t tools. it does not require a deep knowledge of computer architecture or operating systems. finally, much of the work has tended to consist of small projects, with fairly low levels of technical complexity. arora et al (2000) report that the median size of the “most important export project” of the

20、 firms they surveyed was only 150 man months, with an average of 510. this suggests that the typical export project is even smaller. moreover, about half of the work was carried out in india; the rest was onsite, in the us.when pressed, most of the managers agreed that they did not require engineers

21、: bright graduates from any field could, with proper training, do what was needed. it seems that the preference for engineers is in some cases a way of signaling quality to customers. as one ceo put it “take somebody from a good college (any of the top 20 colleges in india), give him 3 months of ori

22、entation and they are ready to take up a programming assignment. i dont need all these engineers. but i dont want to be branded by my customers as a guy who hires niit graduates.” (emphases added.)(from sloan report, arora et al 1999)this is a clear instance of a “race to the top”. with limited mark

23、et power, indian software exporters try to distinguish themselves from the competition by pointing to the quality of their processes and people, and when possible, their experience.firms also have quality concerns. some managers we interviewed believe that an engineering education imparts a set of p

24、roblem solving skills, methods of thinking logically and learning tools that help quick adaptation to changes in technology, domains and tasks. since indian firms provide services across a range of platforms and domains, this is an important asset. another important consideration has to do the quali

25、ty signaling in the labor market. the indian education system is such that competition for an engineering education is intense, and as a result, graduating with an engineering degree is a signal of qualities such as intelligence and willingness to work hard. software firms may prize these qualities

26、more than the specific substantive knowledge of engineering.if so, this is certainly an inefficient allocation of resources.17 indeed; the software industry has been growing in part by drawing away engineers from other industries. in our interviews we came across a number of instances of engineers w

27、ith highly specialized training (such as vlsi design or satellite systems) working on tasks such as database design or development of business application software. quite a few senior level engineers were drawn from a variety of public sector research and development institutions. such a transfer of

28、 resources is entirely in line with the presumed comparative advantage in software development. of course, there are a variety of distortions in the indian economy, which imply caution in interpreting the market signals.18 in addition to changing the composition of economic activity, the increasingl

29、y tight market for engineers and managers is also likely to affect the organization of economic activity. as we discuss in greater detail in section 6, the increasing demand for trained engineers and managers is also affecting the balance between capital and labor (or more precisely, between capital

30、 and human capital), resulting in organizational innovations.the clearly increasing payoffs to human capital are also inducing greater investment in human capital. the indian middle class has always relied upon education, particularly professional education such as engineering or medicine as means o

31、f economic advance. however, with a slowly growing economy, the returns to such investments have not been very high. the precarious state of public finances has limited the ability of the central and state governments to expand tertiary education. the rapid growth of the software sector has however,

32、 marked a watershed. one of the most rapidly growing sectors within the software industry is for private training.private training institutions train individuals specifically for work in software development. nasscom sources estimated that there were 3800 such training firms in 1998, in what was the

33、n a $300 million market, although together niit and aptech are believed to have 70% of the software training market. private training institutes are also important for helping existing software developers acquire new skills. many engineers also undertake further training in software development on t

34、heir own from private training institutes. the growing presence of private training institutes in cities in india is increasingly making it possible for software developers to obtain certificates and diplomas from such institutes.it is also noteworthy that this is a private sector response to a mark

35、et opportunity, namely the demand for training in specialized skills. in the us and elsewhere, for profit firms compete with a variety of public institutions, such as state and community colleges in the us. in india, the rapid growth of private training institutes testifies to the changed economic c

36、limate and the channeling of entrepreneurship into economically productive areas away from mere rent-seeking. this change, too, owes at least indirectly to the rapid growth of the software industry.to sum up the foregoing, we believe the evidence indicates that until recently, an excess supply of tr

37、ained engineering talent was a significant source of competitive advantage for indian firms. by the same token, it provided few incentives for firms to economize on the use of skilled engineering talent. instead, the growth of the industry and high salaries have attracted not only newly graduating e

38、ngineers but also engineers, managers and other professionals from other industrial sectors.despite this, the explosive growth in the software industry has lead to a stage where firms recognize that skilled engineers, software professionals and good managers are a scarce resource. moreover, faced wi

39、th a number of attractive options including a move overseas, these talented engineers and managers are looking for more money and a more professional and rewarding work environment. in turn, this entails a variety of organizational changes we discuss below.软件产业和印度的经济发展asish arora suma athreye美国 印度信息

40、经济学和政策，2001年第一期4、软件行业的发展和人力资本的形成：在教育方面的私人和公共投资和工程教育回报尽管印度拥有世界上最多的科学家和工程师，但是其由于52%的工作人员无法读写，而同时成为世界上识字率最低的国家。正如表3所示，尽管有大量的工程师，但是印度每百万人口里工程师的数量还是低于其他一些国家。由于缓慢增长的干预型经济不能产生对工程师的足够需求，相应的就有对现存但未被雇用的工程师的过度依赖。大部分的印度软件公司的职员都毕业于工程学院。根据arora et al. (2000)的报告，大部分被访企业只雇用工程师。60家软件公司的调查数据显示，超过80%的公司雇员有工程师学位，只有13%是

41、在软件发展中被培训起来的非工程师。在采访中，很多公司明确表示他们只雇用工程师。 在软件行业发展的初期，由于需求远远小于每年的供给量，这种对工程师的偏好并不明显或者不导致什么后果。印度总共有160，000各种各样工程类毕业生。印度产业稳定而快速的发展意味着在1998年和1999年间，被雇佣者的数量将会累计到近250.000，预计将会在2000到2001年间突破400，000。即使软件产业每年以50%的增长率增长，甚至假设生产力提高，软件产业似乎还是会将出现工程师供不应求的局面。（参考 arora, asundi 和 fernandes,2000年细节。） 这些预言得到证据支持。软件产业的工资率每

42、年以20%的增长率在增长，同时人员损耗率也是相当的高。当在1998年至1999年间，当软件产业被问及列举他们发展所面临的三大问题时，超过一半的公司（以超过100的公司为样本），不考虑公司的时间、规模和市场导向（出口或者进口），都不约而同的选择了人员紧缺和人员损耗作为他们所面临的最严重的问题。尽管愿意偿付远远高于印度标准水平的工资, 很多企业最终还是发现难以吸引并且留住优秀的软件开发人才。公共政策对此做出的反应是加强在工程学院上的投资，重视工程课程上的信息技术，和信息技术机构（iiit）以及更有名的印度技术机构的创建等。尽管从表面上来看这些举措是合理的，但是实际上这并不能解决问题。这些投资根本不

43、可能在短期内能显著改善工程人员供给。同时，如此大规模扩容导致软件产业发展趋向于抽调工程硕士和博士。一份最近对印度工程研究生教育的调查显示，工程博士的数量已经从1987年的675位下降到1995年的375位。同时，拥有硕士头衔的工程师的数量也只是缓慢增长，从1987-89年间的12，000位增长到了1990-92年间的17，000位。对印度技术机构理工学校的调查显示，大量的该校毕业生进入信息技术部门工作，有时甚至高达90%。另外，表6显示印度大部分工程学校集中在少部分的几个州maharashtra, karnataka, tamil nadu and andhra pradesh。同时其中大部分

44、都是私立大学，在这些学校的学生收到的补助远远小于就读于州立大学的学生。但是，私立学院并未能在国家的其它部分扩散开来是一个有趣而费解的现象。我们只能大概的估计这部分归因于文化和政治因素，部分取决于在其它州人力资本投资的低收益率。并非巧合的，南部和西北在经济上确实是更发达。 我们认为，尽管在工程教育方面的投资是必需的，但是解决问题的更有效的办法应该是依赖于对现有人力资源的合理利用。在这场争论中的隐含假设是只有工程类毕业生才能胜任软件开发任务。这个假设技术显然是不合理的。首先,大部分现在软件产业工作的工程师事实上都是没有接受过在软件工程、电脑科学或者相关领域等的训练。其次，很大一部分工作是涉及到商业

45、应用，数据库等。事实上，最初大量的工作涉及到从一个运行平台（通常如维护）到另一个运行平台（如unix平台）的运用。这些工作只要求对软件开发工具相当熟悉，但并不要求对电脑结构和运行系统具有很深的认识。最后，大部分的工作其实都是由一个个具有较低技术复杂性的小工程组成的。arora et al（2000）在他们调查中发现，公司最重要的出口工程的中等规模是150个人，但平均有510人。这表明典型的出口工程甚至更小。更有甚者，大约一半的工作在印度国内执行，剩下的则在美国。当迫于无奈，很多经理也表示他们并不需要工程师：聪明的毕业生只要经过适当的培训，是能很快胜任何工作的。但是似乎对工程师的偏好是出于对顾客传递产品质量信号的考虑。正如某一ceo所说，“雇佣任何一个优秀学府的毕业生（印度排名前20的大学中的任何一所），给他