IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sls/ipmsls/v36y20192.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Composition of Capital and Cross-Country Productivity Comparisons

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Inklaar
  • Pieter Woltjer
  • Daniel Gallardo Albarrán

Abstract

The role of physical capital is typically found to be limited in accounting for differences in GDP per worker, but this result may be because capital is customarily assumed to be a homogenous unit. This assumption is misleading, as different types of capital assets have different marginal products and richer countries tend to invest more in high-marginal product assets. We take this perspective to a global dataset, the Penn World Table, to improve cross-country productivity comparisons. We show that, properly measured, differences in capital input can account for a greater share of income variation, but (total factor) productivity differences remain dominant.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Inklaar & Pieter Woltjer & Daniel Gallardo Albarrán, 2019. "The Composition of Capital and Cross-Country Productivity Comparisons," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 36, pages 34-52, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:sls:ipmsls:v:36:y:2019:2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.csls.ca/ipm/36/Inklaar_etal.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francesco Caselli & James Feyrer, 2007. "The Marginal Product of Capital," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 535-568.
    2. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2010. "Development Accounting," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 207-223, January.
    3. David Lagakos & Benjamin Moll & Tommaso Porzio & Nancy Qian & Todd Schoellman, 2018. "Life Cycle Wage Growth across Countries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 797-849.
    4. Paul Schreyer, 2007. "International Comparisons of Levels of Capital Input and Multi‐Factor Productivity," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 8(2), pages 237-254, May.
    5. Glenn-Marie Lange & Quentin Wodon & Kevin Carey, 2018. "The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 29001.
    6. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1990. "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 92-96, May.
    7. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Diewert, W Erwin, 1982. "The Economic Theory of Index Numbers and the Measurement of Input, Output, and Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1393-1414, November.
    8. Robert Inklaar & Marcel P. Timmer, 2012. "Productivity Convergence Across Industries and Countries: The Importance of Theory-based Measurement," Chapters, in: Matilde Mas & Robert Stehrer (ed.), Industrial Productivity in Europe, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2007. "Relative Prices and Relative Prosperity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 562-585, June.
    10. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
    11. repec:dgr:rugggd:gd-109 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Schreyer Paul, 2007. "International Comparisons of Levels of Capital Input and Multi-Factor Productivity," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 237-254, May.
    13. Felix Gerding & Espen Henriksen & Ina Simonovska, 2014. "The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets," NBER Working Papers 20769, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Wen Chen, 2018. "Cross‐Country Income Differences Revisited: Accounting for the Role of Intangible Capital," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(3), pages 626-648, September.
    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. Takeuchi, Fumihide, 2023. "Intermediate goods-skill complementarity and income distribution," MPRA Paper 116372, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Matthew Higgins, 2020. "China's Growth Outlook: Is High-Income Status in Reach?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 26(4), pages 69-97, October.
    3. Reitze Gouma & Robert Inklaar, 2023. "Capital Measurement and Productivity Growth Across International Databases," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 44, pages 67-88, Fall.
    4. Giorgio Calcagnini & Germana Giombini & Giuseppe Travaglini, 2021. "The Productivity Gap Among Major European Countries, USA and Japan," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 7(1), pages 59-78, March.
    5. John G. Fernald, 2022. "Dale W. Jorgenson: An Intellectual Biography," Working Paper Series 2022-08, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    6. Bakker, Bas & Ghazanchyan, Manuk & Ho, Alex & Nanda, Vibha, 2020. "The Lack of Convergence of Latin-America Compared with CESEE: Is Low Investment to Blame?," MPRA Paper 101287, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Dale W. Jorgenson, 2019. "Introduction," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 36, pages 1-6, Spring.
    8. Thomas Ziesemer, 2023. "Labour-augmenting technical change data for alternative elasticities of substitution: growth, slowdown, and distribution dynamics," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 449-475, May.
    9. Francisco J. Buera & Joseph P. Kaboski & Robert M. Townsend, 2023. "From Micro to Macro Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 471-503, June.
    10. Mauricio A. Grotz, 2020. "Productividad total de los factores: revisión conceptual y tendencias en la literatura," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4353, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    11. Zhang, Yifei & Fang, Heyang, 2020. "Does China's overseas lending favor One Belt One Road countries?," MPRA Paper 97954, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Francisco J. Buera & Joseph P. Kaboski & Martí Mestieri & Daniel G. O'Connor, 2020. "The Stable Transformation Path," NBER Working Papers 27731, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Ugur, Mehmet, 2024. "Innovation, market power and the labour share: Evidence from OECD industries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    14. Dieppe,Alistair Matthew & Kilic Celik,Sinem & Okou,Cedric Iltis Finafa, 2020. "Implications of Major Adverse Events on Productivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9411, The World Bank.
    15. Thomas H. W. Ziesemer, 2024. "Public R&D and Growth: A dynamic Panel Vector-Error-Correction Model Analysis for 14 OECD Countries," Economies, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-33, August.
    16. Yan Meng & Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2023. "Is newer always better? A reinvestigation of productivity dynamics using updated PWT data," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 1-13, February.
    17. Eric Kemp-Benedict, 2024. "Cost share-induced technological change: An analytical classical-evolutionary model," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 515-567, July.
    18. Zhang, Yifei & Fang, Heyang, 2019. "Does China's overseas lending favors One Belt One Road countries?," MPRA Paper 97785, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Mello Marcelo, 2009. "Estimates of the Marginal Product of Capital, 1970-2000," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-30, May.
    2. Sirsha Chatterjee & Kanda Naknoi, 2010. "The Marginal Product of Capital, Capital Flows, and Convergence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 73-77, May.
    3. Alexander Monge-Naranjo & Juan M. Sánchez & Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis, 2019. "Natural Resources and Global Misallocation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 79-126, April.
    4. The University of Iowa & Michael Waugh, 2008. "Bilateral Trade, Relative Prices, and Trade Costs," 2008 Meeting Papers 781, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Felix Gerding & Espen Henriksen & Ina Simonovska, 2014. "The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets," NBER Working Papers 20769, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Mr. Prakash Kannan, 2008. "Perspectives on High Real Interest Rates in Turkey," IMF Working Papers 2008/251, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Claudio Borio & Piti Disyatat, 2015. "Capital flows and the current account: Taking financing (more) seriously," BIS Working Papers 525, Bank for International Settlements.
    8. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Olivier Jeanne, 2013. "Capital Flows to Developing Countries: The Allocation Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(4), pages 1484-1515.
    9. Anusha Chari & Jennifer S. Rhee, 2020. "The Return to Capital in Capital-Scarce Countries," NBER Working Papers 27675, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Claudio Borio & Piti Disyatat, 2015. "Capital flows and the current account: Taking financing (more) seriously," BIS Working Papers 525, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Carolina Arteaga Cabrales, 2011. "Human Capital Externalities and Growth," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 29(66), pages 12-47, December.
    12. Clemens, Michael A. & Pritchett, Lant, 2019. "The new economic case for migration restrictions: An assessment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 153-164.
    13. Alexander Monge-Naranjo & Juan M. Sánchez & Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis, 2018. "On the Global Misallocation of Human Capital," Working Papers 1037, Barcelona School of Economics.
    14. Daniel Schäfer, 2024. "Development and Sector Labor Income Shares," Economics working papers 2024-05, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    15. Chong-En Bai & Chang-Tai Hsieh & Yingyi Qian, 2006. "The Return to Capital in China," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 37(2), pages 61-102.
    16. Batista, Catia & Potin, Jacques, 2008. "International Specialization and the Return to Capital, 1976-2000," ESSEC Working Papers DR 08001, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    17. Guven, Cahit, 2016. "Financial integration: The role of tradable and non-tradable goods," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 345-353.
    18. Kevin Donovan & Jianyu Lu & Todd Schoellman, 2018. "Labor Market Flows and Development," 2018 Meeting Papers 976, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Hernando Zuleta, 2015. "Factor shares, inequality, and capital flows," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(2), pages 647-667, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cross-Country Productivity Comparisons; Total Factor Productivity; Capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

    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:sls:ipmsls:v:36:y:2019:2. 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: CSLS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cslssca.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.