IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hep/macppr/201604.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor Productivity Slowdown in the Developed Economies. Another Productivity Puzzle?

Author

Listed:
  • Georg Erber

    (formerly DIW)

  • Ulrich Fritsche

    (Universität Hamburg (University of Hamburg))

  • Patrick Harms

    (Universität Hamburg (University of Hamburg))

Abstract

The paper addresses the topic of an overall long-term productivity slowdown in labor productivity for a panel of 25 developed countries. Besides studying individual long-term trends of single countries using filtering techniques we also test for multiple structural breakpoints in the long-term trends. Furthermore after determining the country specific long-term productivity trends using state-space approaches, we extract a common factor from these long-term trend series using factor analysis. The country specific differences are only of second order importance. Dominant is an overall long-term productivity slowdown. The beginning of this slowdown already started in the 1970s and has persisted without any significant structural breakpoint afterwards until now. The same analysis for GDP growth and hours worked data were performed. We found similar results for the GDP growth data compared to the productivity data but not for the hours worked data. Furthermore Granger causality tests reveal that the trend productivity slowdown is driven by the downward trending GDP growth and not vice versa. For the hours worked data no significant relation to productivity growth could be confirmed.

Suggested Citation

  • Georg Erber & Ulrich Fritsche & Patrick Harms, 2016. "Labor Productivity Slowdown in the Developed Economies. Another Productivity Puzzle?," Macroeconomics and Finance Series 201604, University of Hamburg, Department of Socioeconomics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hep:macppr:201604
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/repec/hepdoc/macppr_4_2016.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2016
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Productivity slowdown; labor productivity; GDP measurement; Granger causality; factor analysis; Kalman filter; structural break;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C38 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Classification Methdos; Cluster Analysis; Principal Components; Factor Analysis

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hep:macppr:201604. 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: Ulrich Fritsche (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dwuhhde.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.