Sectoral Decomposition of Convergence in Labor Productivity : A Re-examination from a New Dataset

This paper investigates how the sector-specific source or the changing sectoral composition of labor productivity has contributed to aggregate beta convergence, using a newly constructed eight-sector database. The main findings are twofold. First,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dieppe, Alistair, Matsuoka, Hideaki
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/490901630527256426/Sectoral-Decomposition-of-Convergence-in-Labor-Productivity-A-Re-examination-from-a-New-Dataset
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36232
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Summary:This paper investigates how the sector-specific source or the changing sectoral composition of labor productivity has contributed to aggregate beta convergence, using a newly constructed eight-sector database. The main findings are twofold. First, both within and sectoral reallocation have become important drivers of aggregate convergence in labor productivity. Second, agricultural productivity growth has been a significant contributor to aggregate convergence, whereas catch-up in other sectors has only contributed a small amount to convergence. The strong growth of the agriculture sector has been the most important driver of aggregate productivity convergence even though agricultural productivity itself in low-income countries is weakly converging to that in advanced economies.