OECD Economics Department Working Papers
Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.
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- ISSN : 18151973 (en ligne)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18151973
Recent Trends and Structural Breaks in US and EU15 Labour Productivity Growth
This paper examines shifts in labour productivity growth in the United States and in Europe between 1970
and 2007 based on econometric tests of structural breaks. Additionally, it makes use of time-series-based
projected labour productivity growth up to 2009 in order to detect any recent break according to a central
scenario as well as high and low scenarios, both derived from a 95% confidence interval. The identification
of structural breaks in US labour productivity growth is far from obvious. A statistically significant break
date is found in the late 1990s only if the upper scenario materialises in the future, which means that
despite a clear pick-up in productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s, the size of the hump is not
still large enough compared with past variation to make this change a statistically significant break.
However, a significant breakpoint is detected in the mid-1990s for the difference in labour productivity
growth between the United States and the EU15 based on observed data, which seems to be due to both the
initial catch-up of Europe and the halt of the convergence process in the mid-1990s. Finally, European
ICT-intensive countries are shown to have structurally performed better in terms of productivity growth
than non-ICT-intensive countries.
Mots-clés: structural break tests, labour productivity growth, ICT
JEL:
E30: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: General;
O51: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Economywide Country Studies / Economywide Country Studies: U.S.; Canada;
O52: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Economywide Country Studies / Economywide Country Studies: Europe;
O47: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity / Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
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