 Relative Prices and Sectoral ProductivityMargarida Duarte and Diego Restuccia Journal of the European Economic Association, 2020, vol. 18, issue 3, 1400-1443 Abstract: The relative price of services rises with development. A standard interpretation of this fact is that productivity differences across countries are larger in manufacturing than in services. The service sector comprises heterogeneous categories and we document that many disaggregated service categories feature a negative income elasticity of relative prices. We divide service industries into two broad categories based on the income gradient of its relative price: traditional services with positive income elasticities and nontraditional services with negative income elasticities of relative prices. Using an otherwise standard multisector development accounting framework extended to include an input–output structure, we find that the cross-country income elasticity of sectoral productivity is large in nontraditional services (1.15), smaller in manufacturing (1.05), and much smaller in traditional services (0.67). Eliminating cross-country productivity differences in nontraditional services reduces aggregate income disparity by 58%, a 7.9-fold reduction in aggregate productivity differences. Heterogeneity between traditional and nontraditional services also has a substantial impact on aggregate productivity. Date: 2020 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:18:y:2020:i:3:p:1400-1443. Access Statistics for this article Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association |
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