This Discussion Paper analyses 23 industrial sector in a sample of 51 developed and developing countries. It distinguishes the contribution of five factors: private capital, infrastructure, education, trade integration, and net efficiency. Several relatively small handicaps, combined multiplicatively, can make a country poor or very poor. In average, the average productivity of the industrial sector is indeed the product of about five times 70%. But 0.70 to the power of five is 17%. The least productive country in the sample, Bangladesh, has a productivity level worth about 2% of that of the richest nations. From this perspective, industry is not much different from aggregate GDP such as analysed in Cohen and Soto (2004) where a similar picture emerged The paper then sheds light on the effect of TFP differential between industry and GDP at large on the relative price of manufactured goods. We show that productivity differentials explain about half of the relative price discrepancy. It then analyses the extent to which this is an explanation of the Lucas Paradox. So far as manufacturing is concerned the paper highlights an "anti-Lucas" paradox whereby the capital output ratio is higher in poor countries than in rich countries. This result tends to deflate the theories according to which fear of expropriation is the critical explanation of the low level of capital in the economy at large.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
5549.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Edward L. Glaeser & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2004.
"Do Institutions Cause Growth?,"
Journal of Economic Growth,
Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 271-303, 09.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Edward L. Glaeser & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer, 2004.
"Do Institutions Cause Growth?,"
NBER Working Papers
10568, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Francisco Alcalá & Antonio Ciccone, 2001.
"Trade and Productivity,"
Economics Working Papers
580, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2002.
[Downloadable!]