Measuring productivity dispersion:Lessons from counting one-hundred million ballots

Ethan Ilzetzki and Saverio Simonelli

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We measure output per worker in nearly 8,000 municipalities in the Italian electoral process using ballot counting times in the 2013 general election and two referenda in 2016. We document large productivity dispersion across provinces in this very uniform and low-skill task that involves nearly no technology and requires limited physical capital. Using a development accounting framework, this measure explains up to half of the firm-level productivity dispersion across Italian provinces and more than half the north-south productivity gap in Italy. We explore potential drivers of our measure of labor efficiency and find that its association with measures of work ethic and trust is particularly robust.

Keywords: Labor productivity; development accounting; work ethic; cultural economics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O47 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2017-08-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86150/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring Productivity Dispersion: Lessons from counting one-hundred million ballots (2017)
Working Paper: Measuring Productivity Dispersion: Lessons From Counting One-Hundred Million Ballots (2017)
Working Paper: Measuring Productivity Dispersion: Lessons From Counting One-Hundred Million Ballots (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:86150

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().