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Comparing TFP Catching-up and Capital Deepening in US and European Growths: A Directional Distance Function Approach

Author

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  • Jean-Philippe Boussemart

    (University of Lille 3, LEM-CNRS (UMR 8179), IESEG School of Management)

  • Hervé Leleu

    (LEM-CNRS (UMR 8179), IÉSEG School of Management)

Abstract

In Solow’s model the income convergence between countries arises from two main sources: a capital deepening effect resulting from the diminishing returns of the production technology and a technological transfer/diffusion effect related to Total Factor Productivity (TFP) differences. A large literature has been devoted to analyze these effects but most of the studies suffer from three weaknesses by defining the US as the a priori technological leader, by using a parametric functional form and by assuming constant returns to scale for the technology. Our paper offers an alternative approach based on a non-parametric programming framework and the estimation of directional distance functions. We explicitly separate country TFP differences into two components: a technology effect and a scale effect to study the catching-up process on each of them. We also analyze the role of the capital deepening effect by introducing a relevant measure of the structural efficiency which reveals inefficiencies due to changes in input-ratio differences. Our empirical work focuses on 15 European countries (EU) and the US over the period 1980-2004. We use time series procedures to test for convergence for individual countries or sub-sets of countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Philippe Boussemart & Hervé Leleu, 2008. "Comparing TFP Catching-up and Capital Deepening in US and European Growths: A Directional Distance Function Approach," Working Papers 2008-ECO-01, IESEG School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:ies:wpaper:e200801
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    TFP Catching-up; Capital Deepening; Convergence; Directional Distance Function. Running title: Comparing TFP Catching-up and Capital Deepening;
    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
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

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