[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10661.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why was Europe Left at the Station When America's Productivity Locomotive Departed?

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. Gordon
Abstract
After fifty years of catching up to the United States level of productivity, since 1995 Europe has been falling behind. The growth rate in output per hour over 1995-2003 in Europe was just half that in the United States, and this annual growth shortfall caused the level of European productivity to fall back from 94 percent of the United States level to 85 percent. Fully one-fifth of the European catch-up (from 44 to 94 percent) over the previous half-century has been lost over the period since 1995. Disaggregated studies of industrial sectors suggest that the main difference between Europe and the United States is in ICT-using industries like wholesale and retail trade and in securities trading. The contrast in retailing calls attention to regulatory barriers and land-use regulations in Europe that inhibit the development of the big box retailing formats that have created many of the productivity gains in the United States. For many decades, the United States and Europe have gone in opposite directions in the public policies relevant for metropolitan growth. The United States has promoted highly dispersed low-density metropolitan areas through its policies of building intra-urban highways, starving public transit, providing tax subsidies to home ownership, and allowing local governments to maintain low density by maintaining minimum residential lot sizes. Europeans have chosen different policies that encourage high-density residential living and retail precincts in the central city while inhibiting the exploitation of greenfield suburban and exurban sites suitable for modern big box retail developments. The middle part of the paper draws on recent writing by Phelps: economic dynamism is promoted by policies that promote competition and flexible equity finance and is retarded by corporatist institutions designed to protect incumbent producers and inhibit new entry. European cultural attributes inhibit the development of ambition and independence by teenagers and young adults, in contrast to their encouragement in the United States. While competition, corporatism, and culture may help to explain the differing transatlantic evolution of productivity growth, they reveal institutional flaws in both continents that are inbred and likely to persist. The final section of the paper identifies the roots of the favorable environment for innovation in the United States compared to Europe. Elements include an openly competitive system of private and public universities, government subsidies to universities through peer-reviewed research grants rather than unconditional subsidies for free undergraduate tuition, the world dominance of United States business schools and management consulting firms, strong United States patent protection, a flexible financial infrastructure making available venture capital finance to promising innovations, the benefits of a common language and free internal migration, and a welcoming environment for highly-skilled immigrants.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Gordon, 2004. "Why was Europe Left at the Station When America's Productivity Locomotive Departed?," NBER Working Papers 10661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10661
    Note: EFG PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10661.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goldin, Claudia, 1998. "America's Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(2), pages 345-374, June.
    2. Eric Bartelsman & Andrea Bassanini & John Haltiwanger & Ron Jarmin & Stefano Scarpetta & Thorsten Schank, 2002. "The Spread of ICT and Productivity Growth: Is Europe Really Lagging Behind in the New Economy?," CEPN Working Papers halshs-00289168, HAL.
    3. Dale W. Jorgenson & Kevin J. Stiroh, 2000. "Raising the Speed Limit: U.S. Economic Growth in the Information Age," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(1), pages 125-236.
    4. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Robert J. Gordon, 1996. "The Economics of New Goods," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bres96-1.
    5. C.J. Krizan & John Haltiwanger & Lucia Foster, 2002. "The Link Between Aggregate and Micro Productivity Growth: Evidence from Retail Trade," Working Papers 02-18, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    6. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226074153 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gordon, Robert J., 2005. "Pourquoi, pendant que la locomotive de la productivité se mettait en branle aux États-Unis, l’Europe est-elle restée en gare," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 81(1), pages 47-74, Mars-Juin.
    2. Robert J. Gordon, 2002. "Technology and Economic Performance in the American Economy," NBER Working Papers 8771, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Richard Dion & Robert Fay, 2008. "Understanding Productivity: A Review of Recent Technical Research," Discussion Papers 08-3, Bank of Canada.
    4. Hans-Günther Vieweg & Thomas Fuchs & Reinhard Hild & Andreas Kuhlmann & Stefan Lachenmaier & Michael Reinhard & Uwe Christian Täger & Sebastian de Ramon & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2005. "Status and outlook of the “New Economy” in selected EU member states from a German Viewpoint," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 19.
    5. Emek Basker, 2015. "Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 339-370, June.
    6. Catherine L. Mann, 2003. "Globalization of IT Services and White Collar Jobs: The Next Wave of Productivity Growth," Policy Briefs PB03-11, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    7. Norman Baldwin & Stephen Borrelli, 2008. "Education and economic growth in the United States: cross-national applications for an intra-national path analysis," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 41(3), pages 183-204, September.
    8. William D. Nordhaus, 2002. "Productivity Growth and the New Economy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 211-265.
    9. Esben Andersen & Jacob Holm, 2014. "The signs of change in economic evolution," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 291-316, April.
    10. Gordon, Robert J., 2004. "Five Puzzles in the Behaviour of Productivity, Investment and Innovation," CEPR Discussion Papers 4414, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Robert J. Gordon, 2000. "Interpreting the "One Big Wave" in U.S. Long-Term Productivity Growth," NBER Working Papers 7752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Susanto Basu & John G. Fernald & Nicholas Oulton & Sylaja Srinivasan, 2004. "The Case of the Missing Productivity Growth, or Does Information Technology Explain Why Productivity Accelerated in the United States but Not in the United Kingdom?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003, Volume 18, pages 9-82, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Susanto Basu & John G. Fernald & Nicholas Oulton & Sylaja Srinivasan, 2003. "The Case of the Missing Productivity Growth: Or, Does Information Technology Explain why Productivity Accelerated in the US but not the UK?," NBER Working Papers 10010, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Graeme Davis & Jyoti Rahman, 2006. "Perspectives on Australia's productivity prospects," Treasury Working Papers 2006-04, The Treasury, Australian Government, revised Sep 2006.
    15. Francine Lafontaine & Jagadeesh Sivadasan, 2009. "Within-firm Labor Productivity across Countries: A Case Study," NBER Chapters, in: International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms, pages 137-172, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. John G. Fernald & Shanthi Ramnath, 2004. "The acceleration in U.S. total productivity after 1995: the role of information technology," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 28(Q I), pages 52-67.
    17. Timmer, Marcel P. & Ypma, Gerard & Ark, Bart van der, 2003. "IT in the European Union: driving productivity divergence?," GGDC Research Memorandum 200363, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen.
    18. Alan Hughes & Michael S Scott Morton, 2005. "ICT and productivity growth - the paradox resolved?," Working Papers wp316, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    19. Jacob Holm, 2014. "The significance of structural transformation to productivity growth," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(5), pages 1009-1036, November.
    20. Oliner, Stephen D. & Sichel, Daniel E. & Stiroh, Kevin J., 2008. "Explaining a productive decade," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 633-673.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10661. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.