A re-examination of the technological catching-up hypothesis across OECD industries

Jean-Philippe Boussemart, Walter Briec, Isabelle Cadoret and Christophe Tavera ()
Additional contact information
Walter Briec: GEREM - Groupe d 'Etudes et de Recherche en Economie et Management - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This study re-examines the catching-up hypothesis at the industry level across the main OECD countries, using panel data econometric models involving technological gap indicators calculated with a nonparametric distance function suggested by Färe et al. [Färe, R.S., Grosskopf, M.N., Norris, M., Xhang, Z., 1994. Productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change in industrialized countries. American Economic Review 84, 66–83]. The results show that there is statistical evidence of a catching-up process at the industry level. Moreover, both tradables and nontradables sectors exhibit catching-up effects and technology adoption from abroad. This result complements the findings by Bernard and Jones [Bernard, A.B., Jones, C.I., 1996a. Comparing apples to oranges: productivity convergence and measurement across industries and countries. American Economic Review 86(5), 1216–1238., Bernard, A.B., Jones, C.I., 1996b. Productivity across industries and countries: Time series theory and evidence. Review Of Economics and Statistics 78, 135–146], Gouyette and Perelman [Gouyette, C., Perelman, S., 1997. Productivity convergence in OECD services industries. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 8, 279–295] and Hansson and Henrekson [Hansson, P., Henrekson, M., 1997. Catching up, social capability, government size and economic growth, in V. Bergström, eds, Government and Growth, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 61–126] that there is no (or even a slow) catching-up effect in the manufacturing sector. Moreover, social capability indicators evaluated for each country show that "Non-European" and "Central European" tradables sectors have a rather similar degree of inefficiency while "North European" countries are less efficient for both tradables and non-tradables. Lastly, both the cross country and the cross sectors dispersions of inefficiency levels are smaller for tradables sectors than for non-tradables.

Keywords: catching-up; Mälmquist productivity change index; technology adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published in Economic Modelling, 2006, 23 (6), pp.967-977. ⟨10.1016/j.econmod.2006.04.014⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: A re-examination of the technological catching-up hypothesis across OECD industries (2006)
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:hal:journl:halshs-00095072

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2006.04.014

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().