Nonlinearities in international productivity growth
Abstract
We use country panel data spanning over 1998-2008 for both developed and developing countries to study the productivity growth when countries are close to the technology frontier. Relying on a semi-parametric generalized additive model, we estimate both reduced and structural forms for total factor productivity growth. We consider three measurements of frontier: the economy with the highest level of productivity growth, the world productivity growth and the productivity growth of the USA. We obtain a U shape relation between productivity growth and the proximity to the world productivity growth. The relation between productivity growth and human capital displays an inverted U-shape form (res. U-shape) when the proximity to the highest productivity growth is used (res. the proximity to productivity growth of the USA). Total staff in R&D has an inverted W-shape effect on productivity growth.