← Search

Searching for the "Productivity Slowdown": Some Surprising Findings from West German Manufacturing

Gebhard Flaig; Viktor Steiner

The Review of Economics and Statistics 1993

The authors test the hypothesis of a negative long-term trend and/or a structural break in total factor productivi ty after the first oil price shock for West German manufacturing industries within an econometric model based on a flexible cost function with capital as a quasi-fixed factor. After adjusting total factor productivity growth for scale economies and varying capacity utilization, this hypothesis is not supported by their empirical findings for the grea t majority of industries studied, whereas the hypothesis that the (log-)level of total factor productivity follows a random walk with drift is not rejected by various statistical tests. Copyright 1993 by MIT Press.

DOI
10.2307/2109626
Volume
75 (1)
Pages
57
Export
BibTeX
Sources
openalex crossref