World productivity: 1996–2014
- American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
- 16(3), Jul, 2024: p.160-189
This study applies a novel growth accounting framework to analyze global total factor productivity (TFP) trends from 1996 to 2014. It identifies four key findings: (1) world productivity growth is highly volatile year-to-year, largely due to labor reallocation across country-industries; (2) country-industry level productivity contributions remain relatively stable; (3) the rise of emerging economies offsets productivity slowdowns in advanced economies until 2008; and (4) post-2008, this offsetting effect fades, leading to a decline in global TFP growth. These insights remain consistent even when accounting for markups, offering a robust view of structural shifts in global productivity. Authors use a new growth accounting method to quantify the drivers of world total factor productivity (TFP) growth during 1996–2014 and uncover four main results. World productivity growth is volatile from year to year. This mainly reflects reallocation of labor across country-industries. The contribution of country-industry level productivity growth to world productivity is relatively constant over time. This constancy masks that the increased importance of emerging economies offsets a productivity slowdown in advanced economies. After 2008, this offsetting effect dissipated and world TFP growth declined. These conclusions are robust to the inclusion of markups in the analysis.- Reproduced