Comparing Apples to Oranges: Productivity Convergence and Measurement Across Industries and Countries: Comment

Sørensen, Anders

doi:10.1257/aer.91.4.1160

Cited by 59 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…At the very least we undertook the consistency check suggested by Sørensen (2001), i.e., using different base years for making the conversions. Results were largely unchanged.…”

Section: The Macro Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Technology and costs in international competitiveness: From countries and sectors to firms

2015

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This paper examines the determinants of international competitiveness at the level of sectors and firms. First, we address the relation between cost-related and technological competition in a sample of fifteen OECD countries. Results suggest that the countries' sectoral market shares are indeed mainly shaped by technological factors (proxied by investment intensity and patents) while cost advantages/disadvantages do not seem to play any significant role. Next, we attempt to identify the underlying dynamics at the firm level. We do that for a single country, Italy, using a large panel of Italian firms, over nearly two decades. Results show that also at micro level in most sectors investments and patents correlate positively both with the probability of being an exporter and with the capacity to acquire and to increase export market shares. The evidence on costs is more mixed. A simple measure like total labour compensation is positively correlated with the probability of being an exporter, while unit labour costs show a negative correlation only in some manufacturing sectors.

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“…At the very least we undertook the consistency check suggested by Sørensen (2001), i.e., using different base years for making the conversions. Results were largely unchanged.…”

Section: The Macro Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Technology and costs in international competitiveness: From countries and sectors to firms

2015

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“…This enables us to do a systematic cross-country convergence analysis of energy-and labour-productivity performance at a high level of sectoral detail. Obviously, the results presented in this paper should be interpreted with caution, bearing in mind the before mentioned issue (see Sørensen 2001, and Bernard and Jones 2001 for a discussion).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 76%

Sectoral Energy- and Labour-Productivity Convergence

Mulder

Groot

2006

Environ Resource Econ

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Abstract. This paper empirically investigates the development of cross-country differences in energy-and labour productivity. The analysis is performed at a detailed sectoral level for 14 OECD countries, covering the period 1970-1997. A r-convergence analysis reveals that the development over time of the cross-country variation in productivity performance differs across sectors as well as across different levels of aggregation. Both patterns of convergence as well as divergence are found. Cross-country variation of productivity levels is typically larger for energy than for labour. A b-convergence analysis provides support for the hypothesis that in most sectors lagging countries tend to catch up with technological leaders, in particular in terms of energy productivity. Moreover, the results show that convergence is conditional, meaning that productivity levels converge to country-specific steady states. Energy prices and wages are shown to positively affect energy-and labour-productivity growth, respectively. We also find evidence for the importance of economies of scale, whereas the investment share, openness and specialization play only a modest role in explaining cross-country variation in energy-and labour-productivity growth.

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“…For instance, in his comments on Bernard and Jones (1996), Sørensen (2001) finds that whether or not we observe convergence depends crucially on the choice of the base year. To check the sensitivity of our results to the choice of the base year, we changed the base year from 1994 to 1995, examined the productivity growth between 1994 and 2000, and re-estimated the baseline model.…”

Section: Robustness Checks the Choice Of The Base Yearmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data used in this paper is a micro database of firms called Kigyou Katsudou Kihon Chousa Houkokusho (The Results of the Basic Survey of Japanese Business Structure and Activities) prepared by the Research and Statistics Depart-1 However, their finding is controversial. Sørensen (2001) criticized in his comment that the established evidence of non-concurrence in manufacturing by Bernard and Jones heavily depended on the choice of base year. Pascual and Westermann (2002) stressed the importance of similar technologies in productivity convergence, disaggregating the industry classification in more detail.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Productivity Convergence at the Firm Level

2005

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Productivity convergence among countries has been investigated extensively with mixed results. This paper extends the analysis to the firm level to shed light on the debate of convergence or non-convergence. We find productivity convergence among firms widely in Japan, in both manufacturing industries and non-manufacturing ones. We obtain these results taking explicit account of exiting firms as a source of selection biases. The convergence rate is much faster among firms than countries. We also find that there are substantial differences among industries in the convergence speed. IT industries that heavily rely on technological progress show faster rates of convergence.

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Comparing Apples to Oranges: Productivity Convergence and Measurement Across Industries and Countries: Comment

Cited by 59 publications

References 6 publications

Technology and costs in international competitiveness: From countries and sectors to firms

Technology and costs in international competitiveness: From countries and sectors to firms

Sectoral Energy- and Labour-Productivity Convergence

Productivity Convergence at the Firm Level

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