Besonders für @Cosa - Unterschiede in der Produktivitäts-Messung US/Europa

verfasst von Popeye, 16.11.2002, 15:07

-->Economics focus

Europe's work in
progress
Nov 14th 2002
From The Economist print edition


Why does Europe's productivity growth lag so far
behind America's?

AMERICA'S short-term economic prospects may be
fragile, but at least its productivity continues to
impress. In the year to the third quarter, labour
productivity grew by 5.3%, the fastest rate for 19
years. In contrast, the European Central Bank's latest
figures showed virtually no increase in productivity in
the euro area in the year to the second quarter. Since
the mid-1990s America's productivity growth has
quickened, Europe's has collapsed.

Europe's failure to reap the same productivity gains
as America is often blamed on its more rigid labour
and capital markets, which prevent firms from taking
full advantage of information technology (IT). But
this is overly simplified. Not only is the productivity
gap between America and Europe exaggerated by
measurement problems; labour-productivity growth is
also a poor gauge of Europe's performance, since
labour-market reforms are meant to pull lower-skilled
workers back into jobs.

There are many ways to measure productivity.
America has chosen the most flattering one, the euro
area the least flattering. American official statistics
use output per man-hour in the non-farm business
sector. Growth in this averaged 2.3% a year in the
five years to 2001. By contrast, the productivity
figures that the ECB publishes for the euro area use
GDP per worker in the whole economy. Growth of this
has averaged less than 1% over the past five years.
Unlike America's, this measure includes the public
sector, which tends to have slower productivity
growth. By taking output per worker rather than
output per hour, it also ignores the fact that average
hours worked have fallen as part-time jobs have
risen, depressing average output per worker.

If one calculates GDP per man-hour for both
economies, labour-productivity growth in the past five
years has averaged 2.2% in the United States,
against 1.4% in the euro area. America still leads,
but by a narrower margin. Yet even these figures are
comparing apples with oranges. One important
difference is the treatment of computer software.
American statisticians count firms' spending on
software as investment, so it contributes to final
GDP. In the euro area, software is instead largely
counted as a current expense, and so is excluded
from final output. The surge in spending on software
in the late 1990s therefore inflated America's growth
rate relative to Europe's.

[img][/img]

François Lequiller*, at
INSEE, France's statistical
office, argues that one way
to resolve this problem, at
least in part, is to use net
domestic product (NDP),
which deducts capital
depreciation, rather than
gross domestic product.
Normally GDP and NDP grow
at roughly the same pace.
But in recent years a
significant gap has opened
up between the two in
America, as the rate of
capital depreciation has
risen sharply thanks to a
surge in investment in
computers and software,
which have much shorter
lives than traditional
machinery. Europe's
investment in software, as
officially measured, is much
lower, so the difference
between GDP and NDP
growth in recent years has
been negligible. Julian
Callow at CSFB calculates
that in the five years to
2001 productivity, measured
by NDP per hour, rose by
1.8% a year in America and
by 1.4% in the euro area-a
much narrower gap.

Whichever figures one uses, though,
labour-productivity growth has risen over the past
decade in America, but fallen in Europe (see chart).
One reason is that American firms invested more
heavily in IT equipment than European firms in the
1990s, boosting the capital stock per worker. This is
why many economists prefer to focus on multifactor
productivity, the increase in the efficiency with which
firms use both capital and labour. But that is even
harder to compare sensibly across countries.


On the flip-side

One explanation for why productivity growth in
Europe has slowed is that reforms to make labour
markets more flexible have deliberately made GDP
growth more job-intensive. More flexible workplace
arrangements, such as part-time jobs and fixed-term
contracts, have allowed firms to get around
job-protection laws and so encouraged more hiring;
cuts in social-security contributions for the low-paid
have priced some of the jobless back into the labour
market. The flip-side is lower average productivity
growth, as more unskilled and inexperienced workers
enter the workforce.

Labour-market reforms in the euro area have been
more successful than is often appreciated.
Participation rates have risen, and unemployment has
fallen. As a share of the population of working age,
employment has risen from 59% in 1996 to 63% last
year. Over the past five years, employment has
increased at an annual rate of 1.4%, even faster than
America's 0.8% rate of expansion and a huge
improvement over the previous five years, when jobs
declined by 0.1% a year.

Michael Dicks, at Lehman Brothers, estimates that
the euro area's structural rate of unemployment (ie,
the lowest jobless rate consistent with stable
inflation) has fallen to 8% of the labour force, from
10% five years ago. The OECD reckons that the
structural unemployment rate has fallen everywhere
in the euro area bar Germany and Greece, where it
has risen. It is striking that productivity growth has
slowed by more in countries with the strongest
employment growth. In Germany, by contrast, where
a still sclerotic labour market has created fewer jobs,
productivity growth has held up better.

To blame slow productivity growth on market
rigidities may therefore miss the point. Europe needs
to make its labour markets more flexible, but in the
short term that may depress productivity growth. On
the other hand, this excuse for Europe's disappointing
performance is not an excuse for postponing deeper
reforms. European governments still have much to
do.
Quelle: Economist (nur Abo)

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gesamter Thread:

• Besonders für @Cosa - Unterschiede in der Produktivitäts-Messung US/Europa - Popeye, 16.11.2002, 15:07
  • Re: Unterschiede in der Produktivitäts-Messung US/Europa - Cosa, 16.11.2002, 16:02
    • Re: Unterschiede in der Produktivitäts-Messung US/Europa - Popeye, 16.11.2002, 17:11
      • Re: Unterschiede in der Produktivität US/Europa? - tas, 16.11.2002, 21:29