Firm-level Productivity Differences: Insights from the OECD's MultiProd Project

Productivity plays a central role in shaping the welfare of societies and the competitiveness of countries. Productivity differences, for instance, explain a large share of the differences in income per capita across countries. This paper investigates the role of productivity heterogeneity across 18 countries over the period 2001-2012. In particular, it analyses the evidence that emerges from the distributed micro-data approach carried out in the OECD MultiProd project. The main outcome of the project is a unique dataset of harmonised crosscountry moments that are representative for the population of firms and comparable across countries even at a detailed industry level. We look at the 90-10 percentile ratio of LP and MFP and show that: i) productivity dispersion is high in both manufacturing and nonfinancial market services; ii) it has increased over time, especially in services; iii) a substantial part of this dispersion comes from differences among firms within the same sector of activity in each country; iv) this within sector dispersion remains the most important component of the overall dispersion for the entire period. Lien vers l'article

BERLINGIERI, G., BLANCHENAY, P., CALLIGARIS, S. and CRISCUOLO, C. (2017). Firm-level Productivity Differences: Insights from the OECD's MultiProd Project. International Productivity Monitor, 32, pp. 97-115.

Mots clés : #Productivity, #OECD, #Policies, #Global-Productivity, #Total-Factor-Productivity, #Wages, #Academics, #Efficiency, #MultiProd