Productivity, efficiency and economic growth: east Asia and the rest of the world

Gaofeng Han, Kaliappa Kalirajan () and Nirvikar Singh

Journal of Developing Areas, 2004, vol. 37, issue 2, 99-118

Abstract: This study compares the sources of growth in East Asia with the rest of the world, using a methodology that allows one to decompose total factor productivity (TFP) growth into technical efficiency changes (catching up) and technological progress. It applies a varying coefficients frontier production function model to aggregate data for the period 1970-1990, for a sample of 45 developed and developing countries. Our results are consistent with the view that East Asian economies were not outliers in terms of TFP growth. Of the high-performing East Asian economies, our methodology identifies South Korea as having the highest TFP growth, followed by Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. Our methodology also allows us to separately estimate technical efficiency change, which is a component of TFP growth, and we find that, in general, the estimated technical efficiency of the high-performing East Asian economies was not out of line with the rest of the world.

Keywords: Total Factor Productivity Growth; Technical Efficiency Change; Technical Progress; Sources of Growth; Varying Coefficients Frontier Production Functions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 F34 F36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jda/summary/v037/37.2han.html

Related works:
Working Paper: Productivity, Efficiency and Economic Growth: East Asia and the Rest of the World (2003)
Working Paper: Productivity, Efficiency and Economic Growth: East Asia and the Rest of the World (2003)
Working Paper: Productivity, Efficiency and Economic Growth: East Asia and the Rest of the World (2003)
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:jda:journl:vol.37:year:2004:issue2:pp:99-118

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Developing Areas from Tennessee State University, College of Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Abu N.M. Wahid ().