Measuring productivity increase by long-run prices: the early analyses of G.R. Porter and R. Giffen

Arrigo Opocher ()

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2010, vol. 17, issue 5, 1271-1291

Abstract: The nineteenth-century economic commentators did not possess a formal measure of the rate at which productivity was increasing during the industrial take-off. Yet they did develop an intuitive method based on the comparative change in long-period prices and wages. This paper reviews the contributions of G.R. Porter and R. Giffen and, in the light of some modern contributions, presents an assessment of their rationality and improvability under current standards. It is argued that a proper measure of industrial productivity increase based on long-run prices is the mathematical dual of a Solovian measure of the industrial total factor productivity growth.

Keywords: Productivity growth; total factor productivity; cost function; real wages; income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672567.2010.522243 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring productivity increase by long-run prices: The early analyses of G.R. Porter and R. Giffen (2009)
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:taf:eujhet:v:17:y:2010:i:5:p:1271-1291

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2010.522243

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().