R. Fare et al., PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH, TECHNICAL PROGRESS, AND EFFICIENCY CHANGE IN INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES, The American economic review, 84(1), 1994, pp. 66-83
This paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 OECD countries over the
period 1979-1988. A nonparametric programming method (activity analysi
s) is used to compute Malmquist productivity indexes. These are decomp
osed into two component measures, namely, technical change and efficie
ncy change. We find that U.S. productivity growth is slightly higher t
han average, all of which is due to technical change. Japan's producti
vity growth is the highest in the sample, with almost half due to effi
ciency change.