IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/urb/wpaper/15_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The productivity gap among European countries

Author

Listed:
  • Giorgio Calcagnini

    () (Department of Economics, Society & Politics, Università di Urbino "Carlo Bo")

  • Germana Giombini

    () (Department of Economics, Society & Politics, Università di Urbino "Carlo Bo)

  • Giuseppe Travaglini

    () (Department of Economics, Society & Politics, Università di Urbino "Carlo Bo)

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in four European countries (France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands) between 1950 and 2011. It uses the common trend - common cycle approach to decompose series in trends and cycles. We find that the four economies share three common trends and a common cycle. Further, we show that in the case of Italy and the Netherlands trend and cycle innovations have a negative relationship that supports the ‘opportunity cost’ approach to productivity growth, and that trend innovations are generally larger than cycle innovations. Finally, while we do not explore what drives the three common trends, we show that countries’ differences in TFP performance in recent years may be due to the so-called “deep”determinants in growth literature such as the presence of efficient mechanisms of creation and transmission of knowledge, international integration, and efficient markets and institutions. Length: 25 pages

Suggested Citation

  • Giorgio Calcagnini & Germana Giombini & Giuseppe Travaglini, 2015. "The productivity gap among European countries," Working Papers 1510, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics - Scientific Committee - L. Stefanini & G. Travaglini, revised 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:urb:wpaper:15_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.uniurb.it/RePEc/urb/wpaper/WP_15_10.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    2. Vahid, F & Engle, Robert F, 1993. "Common Trends and Common Cycles," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(4), pages 341-360, Oct.-Dec..
    3. Zvi Griliches, 1998. "Productivity, R&D, and the Data Constraint," NBER Chapters, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 347-374, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Saikkonen, Pentti & Lütkepohl, Helmut, 2000. "Testing For The Cointegrating Rank Of A Var Process With An Intercept," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(3), pages 373-406, June.
    5. Giorgio Calcagnini & Annalisa Ferrando & Germana Giombini, 2015. "Multiple market imperfections, firm profitability and investment," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 95-120, August.
    6. Enrico Saltari & Giuseppe Travaglini, 2009. "The Productivity Slowdown Puzzle. Technological and Non-technological Shocks in the Labor Market," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 483-509.
    7. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 1993. "Productivity growth and the structure of the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 861-883, May.
    8. Enrico Saltari & Giuseppe Travaglini, 2008. "Il rallentamento della produttività del lavoro e la crescita dell'occupazione. Il ruolo del progresso tecnologico e della flessibilità del lavoro," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 3-38.
    9. Saikkonen, Pentti & Lutkepohl, Helmut, 2000. "Testing for the Cointegrating Rank of a VAR Process with Structural Shifts," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 18(4), pages 451-464, October.
    10. Perron, Pierre & Rodriguez, Gabriel, 2003. "GLS detrending, efficient unit root tests and structural change," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-27, July.
    11. Raphaël Chiappini, 2014. "Persistence vs. mobility in industrial and technological specialisations: evidence from 11 Euro area countries," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 159-187, January.
    12. Calcagnini, Giorgio, 1995. "Common trends and common cycles in international labor productivity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 179-184, May.
    13. Calcagnini, Giorgio & Ferrando, Annalisa & Giombini, Germana, 2014. "Does employment protection legislation affect firm investment? The European case," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 658-665.
    14. Jörg MAYER, 2001. "Technology Diffusion, Human Capital And Economic Growth In Developing Countries," UNCTAD Discussion Papers 154, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    15. David Sondermann, 2014. "Productivity in the euro area: any evidence of convergence?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 999-1027, November.
    16. Lutkepohl, Helmut & Saikkonen, Pentti, 2000. "Testing for the cointegrating rank of a VAR process with a time trend," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 177-198, March.
    17. Sergio De Nardis & Marco Ventura, 2010. "The Effects of Product Dropping on Firm's Productivity and Employment Composition," ISAE Working Papers 127, ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY).
    18. Perron, Pierre & Rodriguez, Gabriel, 2003. "GLS detrending, efficient unit root tests and structural change," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-27, July.
    19. Engle, Robert F. & Issler, João Victor, 1993. "Common trends and common cycles in Latin America," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 47(2), April.
    20. Johansen, Soren, 1991. "Estimation and Hypothesis Testing of Cointegration Vectors in Gaussian Vector Autoregressive Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1551-1580, November.
    21. Calcagnini, Giorgio & Travaglini, Giuseppe, 2014. "A time series analysis of labor productivity. Italy versus the European countries and the U.S," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 622-628.
    22. Richard G. Lipsey & Kenneth Carlaw, 2000. "What Does Total Factor Productivity Measure?," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 1, pages 31-40, Fall.
    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. Germana Giombini & Francesco Perugini & Giuseppe Travaglini, 2017. "The productivity slowdown puzzle of European countries: a focus on Italy," Argomenti, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics, vol. 6(6), pages 1-20, January-A.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Total factor productivity; Cointegration analysis; Market imperfections;

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production

    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:urb:wpaper:15_10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Carmela Nicoletti). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/feurbit.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.