IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04117046.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Productivity and Regulation in the Construction Sector: Evidence for OECD Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Abdoulaye Kane

    (CSTB - Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment, UPN SEGMI - Université Paris Nanterre - UFR Sciences économiques, gestion, mathématiques, informatique - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre, EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Jimmy Lopez

    (LEDi - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dijon [Dijon] - UB - Université de Bourgogne - UBFC - Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté [COMUE])

Abstract

Labor productivity growth in the construction sector has been very weak in recent decades in most OECD countries. This paper addresses this issue based on a panel of 23 countries over the period 1995-2015. First, we use the Ackerberg, Caves, and Frazer (2015) method to propose a multifactor explanation for this lack of productivity growth: (i) average TFP growth is close to zero and even negative for most countries; (ii) average contributions to growth of capital and intermediate inputs are positive but weak, respectively of 0.05% and 0.90% per year, and much smaller than in the manufacturing sector over the same period (respectively of 0.40% and 3.10% per year). Then, we investigate whether reforms of regulations specific to the construction sector might boost productivity there. Using regulation indicators from the "Doing Business Report", we find a negative impact of these regulations on TFP, but not on the intensities of capital and intermediate inputs. Our results suggest that reducing the construction sector regulations might bolster productivity: a switch to the lightest regulations would lead to a long-term TFP increase of 6% on average.

Suggested Citation

  • Abdoulaye Kane & Jimmy Lopez, 2023. "Productivity and Regulation in the Construction Sector: Evidence for OECD Countries," Post-Print hal-04117046, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04117046
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2023.2208845
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04117046
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04117046/document
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2023.2208845?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Construction sector; Production function; Labor productivity; Total factor productivity; Regulation and business law;
    All these keywords.

    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:hal:journl:hal-04117046. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.