Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?"

Robert E. Hall and Charles Jones

Working Papers from Stanford University, Department of Economics

Abstract: March 11, 1998

Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker --- we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.

This is a revised version of "The Productivity of Nations" (NBER Working Paper No. 5812).

Date: 1998-03-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

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

Related works:
Journal Article: Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others? (1999)
Working Paper: Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others? (1999)
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:wop:stanec:98007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Stanford University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().