THE GROWTH AND CONVERGENCE OF MANUFACTURING PRODUCTIVITY IN INDUSTRIAL AND NEWLY INDUSTRIALIZING COUNTRIES

This paper focuses on the manufacturing sector of specific economies t o examine ''why their growth rates differ''. The technology gap approa ch is adopted to show the relevant role of technological change on nat ional manufacturing productivity growth. The productivity convergence hypothesis was partially supported by the results. The results also pr oduce empirical evidence of the importance of the inputs of the techno logical gap model to countries at different levels of manufacturing de velopment. The estimated models suggest that the input coefficients mi ght be related to the gap of a country to the leader.