Productivity Growth and Labor Reallocation: Latin America versus East Asia

Murat Üngör

Review of Economic Dynamics, 2017, vol. 24, 25-42

Abstract: Over the period 1963 to 2010, Latin American countries exhibit much slower de-agriculturalization than East Asian countries. The manufacturing employment share has been almost stagnant in Latin America, but exhibits a hump-shaped pattern in Korea and Taiwan. Both groups have moved increasingly toward service-based economies. A nine-sector general equilibrium model, treating sectoral productivity growth rates as exogenous, accounts for some of the differing sectoral allocations of employment in Latin America and East Asia over the sample period. I perform a series of experiments, replacing the sectoral labor productivity growth rates in each sector for each Latin American country with the corresponding growth rates in Korea and Taiwan. Low aggregate productivity growth in Latin America is an economy-wide phenomenon concerning all sectors; however, the findings highlight the possible importance of raising productivity in manufacturing and wholesale to have significant increases in aggregate productivity growth rates. I focus attention on the importance of the level of disaggregation in examining the relationship between labor productivity growth and sectoral movement of labor. Some evidence is presented in linking sectoral policies to productivity growth in Latin America and East Asia. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Keywords: East Asia; Latin America; Sectoral productivity differences; Structural transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C68 O11 O41 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2016.12.004
Access to full texts is restricted to ScienceDirect subscribers and institutional members. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/ for details.

Related works:
Software Item: Code and data files for "Productivity Growth and Labor Reallocation: Latin America versus East Asia" (2016)
Working Paper: Online Appendix to "Productivity Growth and Labor Reallocation: Latin America versus East Asia" (2016)
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:red:issued:11-273

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economic ... ription-information/

DOI: 10.1016/j.red.2016.12.004

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economic Dynamics is currently edited by Loukas Karabarbounis

More articles in Review of Economic Dynamics from Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().