IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/7737.html

Sectoral productivity gaps and aggregate productivity

Author

Listed:
  • Sinha,Rishabh

Abstract

This paper examines the role of changes in sectoral productivity gaps over time in accounting for growth realized by countries over the past few decades. To quantify the productivity impact of the sectoral gaps, a simple model of resource allocation is developed in which the gaps arise due to distortions in the form of asymmetrical taxes across sectors. The paper finds a limited role of changes in distortions over time in accounting for actual growth. Implied growth from changes in distortions accounts for less than 2.5 percent of actual growth for the median country. To check if the lower contribution of changes in distortions is because of unrealized gains suggested by high levels of present distortions, productivity gains are estimated when distortions across countries are reduced to the US levels. Barring a couple of cases, the gains in aggregate productivity are modest across the sample of countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Sinha,Rishabh, 2016. "Sectoral productivity gaps and aggregate productivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7737, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7737
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/304071467228315078/pdf/WPS7737.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Alistair Dieppe & Hideaki Matsuoka, 2025. "Sectoral decomposition of convergence in labor productivity: a re-examination from a new dataset," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 68(4), pages 1829-1859, April.
    2. Sinha, Rishabh, 2023. "Central America's deindustrialization," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 319-335.
    3. Alistair Dieppe, 2021. "Global Productivity," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 34015, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O50 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - General

    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:wbk:wbrwps:7737. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.