The United Kingdom's productivity gap: Its size and causes

Dmwn Hitchens and Je Birnie

Omega, 1989, vol. 17, issue 3, 209-221

Abstract: The level of labour productivity in British manufacturing industry is compared to that of the USA and Germany and other industrial economies. American levels of output per head have been two to three times those of the UK throughout this century, while Germany overtook British manufacturing in the 1950's and now has a comparative productivity at least 50% higher. The acceleration in UK productivity growth since 1979 has not yet removed much of the productivity shortfall relative to the rest of the Western world. A review of previous studies shows that Britain has its worst comparative performance in those sectors which tend to be skill and technology intensive; engineering is a notable example. In our consideration of possible explanations of Britain's comparatively poor performance more stress is placed on the human inputs of labour and management than on the quantity of capital, the level or variability of demand, plant or firm size, industrial structure and the degree of foreign ownership. Institutional and cultural factors have produced workers and managers who are not appropriately skilled to achieve the standards of their German or American counterparts in terms of either physical productivity or 'value' productivity (products with value-added, enhanced by superior quality, design, technology or reliability).

Keywords: Britain; America; Germany; manufacturing; productivity; international; comparisons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0305-0483(89)90027-3
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jomega:v:17:y:1989:i:3:p:209-221

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Omega is currently edited by B. Lev

More articles in Omega from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().