Estimation of Cross-Country Differences in Industry / James Harrigan.

By:

Harrigan, James

Contributor(s):

National Bureau of Economic Research

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w6121.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1997.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: Many economists and policy makers are concerned about international differences in technology and labor quality, correctly seeing these issues as crucial to long term growth in living standards. Typically, international trade economists assume that technological knowledge is the same in all countries, and that production processes exhibit constant returns to scale. An equivalent way of stating this assumption is that total factor productivity (TFP) for each industry is the same in every country. This paper is a contribution to a growing body of work which casts doubt on this hypothesis, finding large and persistent TFP differences across countries. The paper uses a new data set on prices, inputs, and outputs for a group of industrialized countries in the 1980s. In addition to calculating industry-specific TFP indexes over time and across countries, the paper uses panel data econometric techniques to examine the sources of the observed large TFP differences across countries. Two hypotheses are examined to account for TFP differences: constant returns to scale production with country-specific technological differences economies with identical technology in each country. The data support the constant returns/different technology hypothesis over the increasing returns/same technology hypothesis.

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Holdings
Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w6121 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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August 1997.

Many economists and policy makers are concerned about international differences in technology and labor quality, correctly seeing these issues as crucial to long term growth in living standards. Typically, international trade economists assume that technological knowledge is the same in all countries, and that production processes exhibit constant returns to scale. An equivalent way of stating this assumption is that total factor productivity (TFP) for each industry is the same in every country. This paper is a contribution to a growing body of work which casts doubt on this hypothesis, finding large and persistent TFP differences across countries. The paper uses a new data set on prices, inputs, and outputs for a group of industrialized countries in the 1980s. In addition to calculating industry-specific TFP indexes over time and across countries, the paper uses panel data econometric techniques to examine the sources of the observed large TFP differences across countries. Two hypotheses are examined to account for TFP differences: constant returns to scale production with country-specific technological differences economies with identical technology in each country. The data support the constant returns/different technology hypothesis over the increasing returns/same technology hypothesis.