IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nsr/niesrd/103.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition and the Dispersion of Labour Productivity amongst UK Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Nick Oulton

Abstract

Based on a sample of 140,000 UK companies over the period 1989-93, this paper finds a wide dispersion of labour productivity across firms. Some dispersion is transitory: amongst surviving companies there is regression towards the mean and dispersion falls over time. However, there are significant differences between sectors in the extent of dispersion, e.g. in manufacturing it is 40-50% lower. A possible explanation is greater competition in manufacturing. A role for competition is also suggested by the finding that surviving companies which were initially below the mean improve their performance more rapidly than those initially above the mean.

Suggested Citation

  • Nick Oulton, 1996. "Competition and the Dispersion of Labour Productivity amongst UK Companies," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 103, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:nsr:niesrd:103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ralf Martin, 2005. "Productivity Dispersion, Competition and Productivity Measurement," CEP Discussion Papers dp0692, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Morikawa, Masayuki, 2012. "Population density and efficiency in energy consumption: An empirical analysis of service establishments," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1617-1622.
    3. Hervé Boulhol & Sabien Dobbelaere & Sara Maioli, 2011. "Imports as Product and Labour Market Discipline," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 49(2), pages 331-361, June.
    4. Moses Acquaah & Tailan Chi, 2007. "A longitudinal analysis of the impact of firm resources and industry characteristics on firm-specific profitability," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 11(3), pages 179-213, September.
    5. Harry Bloch & James McDonald, 2001. "Import Competition and Labor Productivity," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 301-319, September.
    6. Molana, Hassan & Montagna, Catia, 2000. "Market structure, cost asymmetries, and fiscal policy effectiveness," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 101-107, July.
    7. Melville McMillan & Wing Chan, 2006. "University Efficiency: A Comparison and Consolidation of Results from Stochastic and Non-stochastic Methods," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 1-30.
    8. Souma, Wataru & Ikeda, Yuichi & Iyetomi, Hiroshi & Fujiwara, Yoshi, 2009. "Distribution of Labour Productivity in Japan over the Period 1996--2006," Economics Discussion Papers 2009-2, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. Escribano, Álvaro & Stucchi, Rodolfo, 2008. "Catching up in total factor productivity through the business cycle : evidence from Spanish manufacturing surveys," UC3M Working papers. Economics we085125, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    10. Fujiwara, Yoshi & Iyetomi, Hiroshi & Ikeda, Yuichi & Souma, Wataru, 2009. "Distribution of Labour Productivity in Japan over the Period 1996-2006," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-14.
    11. P. Hart, 2000. "Theories of Firms' Growth and the Generation of Jobs," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 17(3), pages 229-248, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nsr:niesrd:103. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Library & Information Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/niesruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.