On the Measurement of Technological Progress Across Countries

Jakub Growiec

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We construct 14 alternative measures of technological progress for 19 OECD countries over the period 1970--2000, distinguishing between measures of productivity gains actually obtained in a given country (TFP growth, Malmquist index) and technological progress at the world technology frontier (potential TFP growth, the "frontier shift" index). We then compare these measures according to a range of characteristics, shedding light on some of their relative weaknesses and strengths. We find that these characteristics are sensitive to the precision of estimates of the world technology frontier, and then we demonstrate that this precision can be increased substantially by allowing for imperfect substitutability between unskilled and skilled labor and using US state-level data apart from cross-country data for estimating the world technology frontier. Because none of the 14 measures dominates all others on all dimensions, we conclude that the choice of appropriate measurement method should be suited to the question addressed in each particular study.

Keywords: technological progress; world technology frontier; country-level data; US state-level data; production function; DEA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E23 O11 O14 O33 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-12-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/39973/2/MPRA_paper_39973.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On the measurement of technological progress across countries (2013)
Working Paper: On the Measurement of Technological Progress Across Countries (2010)
Working Paper: On the measurement of technological progress across countries (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:19321

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