IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/14_16.html

Productivity distributions in New Zealand: The dangers of international comparison

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Fabling

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

  • Lynda Sanderson

    (The Treasury)

Abstract

Recent discussions of New Zealand's relative economic performance have drawn a link between firm-level productivity dispersion and a lack of competitive pressure. This note describes a simple example using New Zealand firm-level data which casts doubt on the assertion that New Zealand has a "long tail" of low productivity firms relative to other countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Fabling & Lynda Sanderson, 2014. "Productivity distributions in New Zealand: The dangers of international comparison," Motu Working Papers 14_16, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:14_16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/14_16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fabling, Richard & Mare, David C, 2015. "Production function estimation using New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database," Motu Working Papers 290585, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    2. Chad Syverson, 2004. "Product Substitutability and Productivity Dispersion," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 534-550, May.
    3. Chad Syverson, 2011. "What Determines Productivity?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 326-365, June.
    4. Fabling, Richard & Mare, David C, 2015. "Addressing the absence of hours information in linked employer-employee data," Motu Working Papers 290583, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Fabling, Richard & Mare, David C, 2015. "Production function estimation using New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database," Motu Working Papers 290585, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    2. Richard Fabling & David Maré, 2024. "Pay in Māori-led firms," Motu Working Papers 24_05, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    3. Apatov, Eyal & Fabling, Richard & Jaffe, Adam & Morris, Michele & Thirtkettle, Matt, 2015. "Agricultural productivity in New Zealand: First estimates from the Longitudinal Business Database," Motu Working Papers 209018, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    4. Guanyu Zheng, 2016. "Geographic proximity and productivity convergence across New Zealand firms," Working Papers 2016/04, New Zealand Productivity Commission.
    5. Fabling, Richard & Mare, David C., 2019. "Improved productivity measurement in New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database," Motu Working Papers 290393, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    6. Fabling, Richard & Mare, David C, 2015. "Addressing the absence of hours information in linked employer-employee data," Motu Working Papers 290583, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    7. Fabling, Richard, 2018. "Entrepreneurial beginnings: Transitions to selfemployment and the creation of jobs," Motu Working Papers 290499, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    8. Richard Fabling, 2021. "Living on the edge: An anatomy of New Zealand's most productive firms," Motu Working Papers 21_01, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David C. Maré & Richard Fabling, 2019. "Competition and productivity: Do commonly used metrics suggest a relationship?," Motu Working Papers 19_16, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    2. David C. Maré & Dean R. Hyslop & Richard Fabling, 2017. "Firm productivity growth and skill," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 302-326, September.
    3. Richard Fabling, 2021. "Living on the edge: An anatomy of New Zealand's most productive firms," Motu Working Papers 21_01, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    4. Fabling, Richard & Mare, David C, 2015. "Production function estimation using New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database," Motu Working Papers 290585, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    5. Aleksandra Kordalska & Magdalena Olczyk, 2020. "What fosters firm-level labour productivity in Eastern European and Central Asian countries?," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 51(1), pages 91-120.
    6. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Rosario Crinò & Gino Gancia, 2019. "Trade, Finance, and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 79-130.
    7. Paul L. E. Grieco & Shengyu Li & Hongsong Zhang, 2022. "Input prices, productivity, and trade dynamics: long‐run effects of liberalization on Chinese paint manufacturers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(3), pages 516-560, September.
    8. Nguyen, Huong, 2016. "Ease of Doing Business Reforms in Vietnam: Implications for Total Factor Productivity in Manufacturing Industries," Papers 999, World Trade Institute.
    9. López-Calva, Luis Felipe & Levy Algazi, Santiago, 2016. "Labor Earnings, Misallocation, and the Returns to Education in Mexico," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7454, Inter-American Development Bank.
    10. Sun, Chuanwang & Tie, Ying & Yu, Lili, 2024. "How to achieve both environmental protection and firm performance improvement: Based on China's carbon emissions trading (CET) policy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    11. Morikawa, Masayuki, 2021. "Price competition vs. quality competition: Evidence from firm surveys," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    12. Fabling, Richard, 2018. "Entrepreneurial beginnings: Transitions to selfemployment and the creation of jobs," Motu Working Papers 290499, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    13. Chun, Hyunbae & Kim, Jung-Wook & Lee, Jason, 2015. "How does information technology improve aggregate productivity? A new channel of productivity dispersion and reallocation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 999-1016.
    14. Joseph Kuehn, 2024. "The effect of competition on the demand for skilled labor: Matching with externalities in the NBA," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 539-581, August.
    15. Hottenrott, Hanna & Rexhäuser, Sascha & Veugelers, Reinhilde, 2016. "Organisational change and the productivity effects of green technology adoption," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 172-194.
    16. Adam Jaffe & Nathan Chappell, 2018. "Worker flows, entry, and productivity in New Zealand's construction industry," Motu Working Papers 18_02, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    17. Stefan Bender & Nicholas Bloom & David Card & John Van Reenen & Stefanie Wolter, 2018. "Management Practices, Workforce Selection, and Productivity," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(S1), pages 371-409.
    18. repec:ces:ceswps:_10944 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Gelb, Alan & Meyer, Christian J. & Ramachandran, Vijaya, 2014. "Development as diffusion: Manufacturing productivity and sub-Saharan Africa's missing middle," WIDER Working Paper Series 042, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Amitabh Chandra & Amy Finkelstein & Adam Sacarny & Chad Syverson, 2013. "Healthcare Exceptionalism? Productivity and Allocation in the U.S. Healthcare Sector," NBER Working Papers 19200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Christopher F Baum & Hans Lööf & Pardis Nabavi, 2019. "Innovation strategies, external knowledge and productivity growth," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 348-367, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

    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:mtu:wpaper:14_16. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Emma Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.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.