IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed008/176.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The World Distribution of Productivity: Country TFP Choice in a Nelson-Phelps Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Erika Farnstrand Damsgaard

    (IIES)

Abstract

This paper builds a theory of the shape of the distribution of total-factor productivity (TFP) across countries. The distribution of productivity across countries is arguably twin-peaked in the data, and the proposed theory presents conditions under which twin-peakedness is an equilibrium outcome. We construct a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model where world growth is endogenous and driven by investments in TFP. All countries invest in TFP in order to increase their productivity, and each country internalizes the dynamic effects of its own TFP accumulation, i.e., through its own investment. In addition, there are technology spillovers across countries, modeled according to the Nelson-Phelps specification. We find that even under the assumption that all countries have identical technologies for TFP accumulation, the world distribution of TFP across countries can be asymmetric; it is twin-peaked, or bimodal. More specifically, twin-peaked world distributions of TFP arise if the catch-up term in the Nelson-Phelps equation is sufficiently weak. If, on the other hand, technological catch-up is important, the world distribution of TFP is unimodal.

Suggested Citation

  • Erika Farnstrand Damsgaard, 2008. "The World Distribution of Productivity: Country TFP Choice in a Nelson-Phelps Economy," 2008 Meeting Papers 176, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed008:176
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2008/paper_176.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Howitt, Peter & Mayer-Foulkes, David, 2005. "R&D, Implementation, and Stagnation: A Schumpeterian Theory of Convergence Clubs," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(1), pages 147-177, February.
    2. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for growth and distribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2138, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Benhabib, Jess & Spiegel, Mark M., 1994. "The role of human capital in economic development evidence from aggregate cross-country data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 143-173, October.
    4. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Paul Beaudry & Fabrice Collard & David A. Green, 2005. "Demographics and recent productivity performance: insights from cross‐country comparisons," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(2), pages 309-344, May.
    6. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    7. Kremer, Michael & Onatski, Alexei & Stock, James, 2001. "Searching for prosperity," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 275-303, December.
    8. Danny Quah, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0324, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Peter J. Klenow & Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, 1997. "The Neoclassical Revival in Growth Economics: Has It Gone Too Far?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1997, Volume 12, pages 73-114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Huggett, Mark, 1993. "The risk-free rate in heterogeneous-agent incomplete-insurance economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 17(5-6), pages 953-969.
    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. Juan R. Perilla Jiménez & Thomas H. W. Ziesemer, 2024. "Technology adoption, innovation policy and catching-up," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 1-24, April.
    2. Jess Benhabib & Jesse Perla & Christopher Tonetti, 2014. "Catch-up and fall-back through innovation and imitation," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-35, March.

    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. Färnstrand Damsgaard, Erika & Krusell, Per, 2010. "The World Distribution of Productivity: Country TFP Choice in a Nelson-Phelps Economy," Working Paper Series 850, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    2. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Howitt, Peter & Mayer-Foulkes, David, 2005. "R&D, Implementation, and Stagnation: A Schumpeterian Theory of Convergence Clubs," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(1), pages 147-177, February.
    4. Hildegunn Stokke, 2004. "Technology adoption and multiple growth paths: An intertemporal general equilibrium analysis of the catch-up process in Thailand," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 140(1), pages 80-109, March.
    5. Stöllinger, Roman, 2013. "International spillovers in a world of technology clubs," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 19-35.
    6. Bryan Graham & Jonathan Temple, 2006. "Rich Nations, Poor Nations: How Much Can Multiple Equilibria Explain?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 5-41, March.
    7. Hafner, Kurt A. & Mayer-Foulkes, David, 2013. "Fertility, economic growth, and human development causal determinants of the developed lifestyle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 38(PA), pages 107-120.
    8. Hildegunn Ekroll Stokke, 2005. "Productivity Growth in Backward Economies and the Role of Barriers to Technology Adoption," Working Paper Series 4905, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    9. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2013:i:114 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Oded Galor & Omer Moav & Dietrich Vollrath, 2009. "Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 143-179.
    11. Camilla Mastromarco & Laura Serlenga & Yongcheol Shin, 2012. "Is Globalization Driving Efficiency? A Threshold Stochastic Frontier Panel Data Modeling Approach," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 563-579, August.
    12. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2002. "15 Years of New Growth Economics : What Have we Learnt?," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 5(2), pages 5-15, August.
    13. Diego A. Comin & Bart Hobijn & Emilie Rovito, 2006. "World Technology Usage Lags," NBER Working Papers 12677, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Seppo Honkapohja & Arja H. Turunen-Red & Alan D. Woodland, 2016. "Growth, expectations and tariffs," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1441-1469, November.
    15. Beaudry, Paul & Collard, Fabrice, 2006. "Globalization, returns to accumulation and the world distribution of output," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(5), pages 879-909, July.
    16. David Mayer Foulkes, 2005. "Institutions and Long-Term Development Policy," Working Papers DTE 328, CIDE, División de Economía.
    17. Johnson, Paul A., 2005. "A continuous state space approach to "Convergence by Parts"," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 317-321, March.
    18. Henderson, Daniel & Russell, Robert, 2001. "Human Capital and Macroeconomic Convergence: A Production-Frontier Approach," Efficiency Series Papers 2001/07, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    19. Galor, Oded & Moav, Omer & Vollrath, Dietrich, 2003. "Land Inequality and the Origin of Divergence and Overtaking in the Growth Process: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 3817, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Growiec, Jakub, 2008. "Productivity differences across OECD countries, 1970–2000: the world technology frontier revisited," MPRA Paper 11605, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Jerzmanowski, Michal, 2007. "Total factor productivity differences: Appropriate technology vs. efficiency," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 2080-2110, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - 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:red:sed008:176. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.