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The study re-examines convergence among Indian states by estimating their total factor productivity (TFP) for the period 1990/91–2018/19. The novelty of the study is the decomposition of TFP change into efficiency change and technological change using the Malmquist index in a spatial dependence framework to test convergence. Findings reveal that, on average, productivity increased at an aggregate level for the entire period on account of the impressive growth of technological innovation. However, technological growth convergence could not lead to productivity growth convergence in the second sub-period because of no convergence in efficiency growth. Alongside, while we witness significant spatial spillovers in both technology and efficiency, convergence was observed only with respect to technology growth in the second sub-period. The congruence of technological convergence and significant spatial spillovers indicates that while states may be converging in technology, they do not do so independently but display movements similar to their regional neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is mainly aimed at identifying the sources of total factor productivity (TFP) growth within the framework of convergence for the Republic of Srpska (RSRP). The main research question is what it is that drives technological progress for a small transition country. The current study focuses on the RSRP, as the follower, and the Republic of Serbia (RSRB), as the technological leader. The analysis carried out in this research study confirms the presence of convergence at the industry level, which means that the farther away from the technological frontier a country is, the higher the TFP growth rate. The research results enable policymakers to design and implement policies capable of enhancing domestic development and increase productivity growth.

The present study examines how policy makers should consider the quality of institutional framework to reduce the productivity gap and increase a country's ability to absorb superior technologies developed elsewhere. This paper analyzes the impact of components of economic freedom, such as the size of government, regulation, and freedom to trade internationally, and world government indicators, such as political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, regulatory quality, and control of corruption on the productivity gap between the "Old" and "New" Europe countries. This is among the first studies to investigate, in a sample of former socialistic countries, the impact of institutions on a country's ability to adopt superior technology developed elsewhere. A static panel analysis was applied on cross-sectional data from the eleven EU countries. The results strongly support the productivity convergence between the "Old" and "New" Europe countries, with a positive impact of the institutions on the productivity growth. However, the impact of the institutions fades the further the country is from the frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The undeniable significance of production has prompted experts to explore further the competitive productivity of various nations across the globe. Despite the importance of global productivity competitiveness, prior studies have not included a comprehensive assessment of the multidimensional productivity index (MPI). Therefore, this study aims to achieve two objectives. First, it extends the scope of prior studies by integrating capital as an input alongside labor and energy consumption, based on 50 factors under 11 indices (including democracy, global competitiveness, and innovation index). Second, global competitive productivity convergence is reaffirmed and expanded. This study employed secondary panel data from 2007 to 2018, and 60,000 data points were obtained from 100 nations. The results reveal that the USA is the most productive country, followed by China, India, and Japan in the context of global competitive productivity. Regional productivity scores show that Asia has a superior productivity rank compared to Europe. However, Africa is performing worse than average. Unlike earlier studies, this study shows that macroeconomic, innovation and infrastructural variables mainly determine the MPI score. The main finding of this study is that there is no statistically significant difference in total factor productivity (TFP) among the developed, developing, and least developed countries. Also, there is no significant influence of regions or alliances on TFP across the countries, confirming the global convergence in competitive productivity. The novelty of this study is that certain statistical evidence accurately portrays global competitiveness in terms of productivity.

Copyright of Australian Journal of Agricultural & Resource Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present study examines how policy makers should consider the quality of institutional framework to reduce the productivity gap and increase a country’s ability to absorb superior technologies developed elsewhere. This paper analyzes the impact of components of economic freedom, such as the size of government, regulation, and freedom to trade internationally, and world government indicators, such as political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, regulatory quality, and control of corruption on the productivity gap between the “Old” and “New” Europe countries. This is among the first studies to investigate, in a sample of former socialistic countries, the impact of institutions on a country’s ability to adopt superior technology developed elsewhere. A static panel analysis was applied on cross-sectional data from the eleven EU countries. The results strongly support the productivity convergence between the “Old” and “New” Europe countries, with a positive impact of the institutions on the productivity growth. However, the impact of the institutions fades the further the country is from the frontier.

The undeniable significance of production has prompted experts to explore further the competitive productivity of various nations across the globe. Despite the importance of global productivity competitiveness, prior studies have not included a comprehensive assessment of the multidimensional productivity index (MPI). Therefore, this study aims to achieve two objectives. First, it extends the scope of prior studies by integrating capital as an input alongside labor and energy consumption, based on 50 factors under 11 indices (including democracy, global competitiveness, and innovation index). Second, global competitive productivity convergence is reaffirmed and expanded. This study employed secondary panel data from 2007 to 2018, and 60,000 data points were obtained from 100 nations. The results reveal that the USA is the most productive country, followed by China, India, and Japan in the context of global competitive productivity. Regional productivity scores show that Asia has a superior productivity rank compared to Europe. However, Africa is performing worse than average. Unlike earlier studies, this study shows that macroeconomic, innovation and infrastructural variables mainly determine the MPI score. The main finding of this study is that there is no statistically significant difference in total factor productivity (TFP) among the developed, developing, and least developed countries. Also, there is no significant influence of regions or alliances on TFP across the countries, confirming the global convergence in competitive productivity. The novelty of this study is that certain statistical evidence accurately portrays global competitiveness in terms of productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1992 Poland has experienced an exceptionally long spell of output growth that was not interrupted even by the global economic crisis. Using a growth accounting exercise based on new estimates of flows of capital and labour services in the Polish economy during the period 1996–2013, we study the structure of this growth, highlighting the key role of certain supply-side factors. Most notably, unlike other European countries, the Polish economy recorded both a marked increase in capital deepening, a big improvement in workforce composition (driven mostly by educational attainment), and an uninterrupted process of productivity convergence. We also comment on the supply-side factors which contributed to Poland’s relative resilience to the global economic crisis of 2007–2010. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main hypothesis tested in the paper is whether technology is a conduit of productivity growth for a country that falls behind the frontier. Although the current analysis focuses on a country growth narrative, the evidence represents a pair of countries (i.e. Greece and Germany) that admittedly form the periphery and the core of Europe. The first lesson taken from the study is that for more than two decades the speed of productivity adjustment was rather low in Greece, underlying a number of unobserved rigidities that exist both at the industry and the institutional level. Even though the speed of technology transfer is low, the adoption of foreign technology remains an important source of productivity growth. Other key findings are that productivity gains from trade exist but their full realization requires a substantial time lag. Additionally, the degree of trade openness improves absorptive capacity, confirming the dual role of trade as recently stressed in the productivity literature. R&D activity is another productivity growth contributor but only through higher rates of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Are less productive regions catching up with more productive regions? In this paper we investigate the importance of regional industry structure for regional productivity convergence. We use county data for the Scandinavian Peninsula. Norway and Sweden are similar in many respects and the Scandinavian Peninsula therefore represents an attractive natural laboratory with one country inside and another outside the European Union. The data cover five-year intervals from 1980 to 2000 for Norway and from 1985 for Sweden. We find strong productivity convergence between Norwegian counties and weak divergence between Swedish ones. The effect of the industry structure on the spatial distribution of productivity appears to be small in magnitude, but it is qualitatively important. Moreover, the role played by the changing composition of production in the process of economic growth seems to differ over time. By implication, considerable caution should be exercised when undertaking convergence studies based on the commonly used one-sector growth model. More complex models allowing for differences in industry structure, and possibly also other potentially important factors such as wealth effects and transitional dynamics, should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents empirical evidence of the effect of FDI inflows on productivity convergence in Central and Eastern Europe, using a new and harmonized industry-level data set. Four conclusions stand out. First, there is a strong convergence effect in productivity, both at the country and at the industry level. Second, FDI inflow plays an important role in accounting for productivity growth. Third, the impact of FDI on productivity critically depends on the absorptive capacity of recipient countries and industries. Fourth, there is important heterogeneity across countries, industries and time with respect to some of the main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A panel data regression analysis investigates the issue of total factor productivity (TFP) convergence in OECD manufacturing during the period 1970–1995. The results imply: conditional β convergence, actual catching up and stronger convergence at a disaggregate level than at the level of manufacturing as a whole. The evolution of the standard deviation of the log of TFP shows that there is also evidence of σ convergence. The stronger convergence of TFP at a disaggregate level is explained by a high level of OECD manufacturing production specialisation, which is also shown to be very persistent. The degree of research specialisation is shown to be even higher and equally sticky. A correlation analysis shows that both specialisation patterns are related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the determinants of labour productivity in the European Union (EU) area and examines the extent to which convergence in output per worker is occurring among Member States (plus Norway) using a recursive common trends analysis and non-parametric kernel density methods. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to construct the best practice EU production frontier and compute a Malmquist index of total factor productivity (TFP) and its decomposition to the factors that affect productivity for each country. We consider a pent-partite decomposition of the growth in labour productivity in terms of (i) pure technological change (ii) input biased technical change (iii) efficiency change (iv) growth in human capital and (v) (physical) capital accumulation. This decomposition enables us to gain more insight on patterns of productivity growth for a cross section of countries as well as isolate the individual factor contributions to (or lack of) convergence and common trends for output per worker in the EU area. The use of human capital as an additional input in the description of technology has a small effect in the overall productivity measures but leads to a substantial fall in the contribution of capital accumulation to growth in output per worker for our sample of countries. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the market reforms of the post 1980 period are likely to have induced considerable change in input prices and factor mix which in turn is reflected in input bias. This is evident from the pattern of the shift in the frontier of technology over time and the underlying trends in the components of technological change. Cross section regression analysis suggests that although there appears to be overall convergence in output per worker in the sample of countries, the input bias component of technological change is a source of divergence. Evidence on increasing convergence among the EU countries is also provided via an analysis of the distribution dynamics of output per worker. Non-parametric methods are used to determine the number of modes in the productivity distribution over time. The evidence suggests that the distribution of output per worker in the EU area has changed from bimodal (twin-peak) to unimodal over time. A recursive common stochastic trends analysis provides further evidence of increased convergence in output per worker among groups (convergence ‘clubs’) of European countries. In particular, the recursive tests show that a common stochastic trend was driving output per worker for the group of small northern European economies (Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Sweden) by the 1990s. Similarly, increased convergence trends were detected for two more groups (1) Greece, Ireland and Portugal and (2) France, Germany and the UK. However, time series tests fail to support the hypothesis that the EU area is a single convergence club. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates cross-country productivity convergence among Mercosur members plus associates (Chile and Bolivia) and Peru, during the period 1960–1999. The testing strategy is based on the definitions of time series convergence by Bernard and Durlauf (1995) [Bernard, A. B., & Durlauf, S. N. (1995). Interpreting tests of convergence hypothesis. Journal of Econometrics, 71, 161–173] and applies sequentially the multivariate unit root tests proposed by Sarno and Taylor (1998) [Sarno, L., & Taylor, M. (1998). Real exchange rates under the recent float: Unequivocal evidence of mean reversion. Economics Letters, 60, 131–137], Flôres et al. (1995) [Flôres, R., Preumont, P.Y., & Szafarz, A. (1995). “Multivariate unit root tests”. Mimeo, Université Libre de Bruxelles] and Breuer et al. (1999) [Breuer, J. B., McNown, R., & Wallace, M. (1999). Series-specific tests for a unit root in a panel setting with an application to real exchange rates. Mimeo: University of South Carolina]. The last two tests allow to identify the countries that converge. Our results show evidence of convergence among the four Mercosur countries, using either Argentina or Brazil as benchmark. Weaker evidence of convergence is also found with Bolivia. The results point out that monetary union among the Southern Cone economies, though a far objective is not without sense. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We find fast convergence in productivity for 99 three-digit European industries over the 1985–98 period. Half of any productivity gap is closed on average in about 10–15 years. We explicitly formulate the steady-state assumptions for structural convergence to hold. Convergence in industrial structure is much slower than productivity catch-up with a half-life of around 50 years, a stylized fact which cannot easily be explained by the existing models of trade and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]