A Proposal to Improve Country-Level Data on Total Factor Productivity Growth

Download or read book A Proposal to Improve Country-Level Data on Total Factor Productivity Growth written by Andrew Warner and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2024-03-22 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The assumption behind popular data on national capital stocks, and therefore total factor productivity, is that countries were in a steady state in the first year that investment data became available. This paper argues that this assumption is highly implausible and is necessarily responsible for implausible data on the ratio of capital to output and productivity growth. It is not credible that countries with similar incomes had huge differences in their capital stocks. This paper claims, with evidence, that implausible features of the data can be greatly reduced by using data on electricity usage or national stocks of road vehicles.