文档介绍：THE ROLE OF THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION
IN AGGREGATE PRODUCTIVITY∗
MARGARIDA DUARTE AND DIEGO IA
We investigate the role of sectoral labor productivity in explaining the process
of structural transformation—the secular reallocation of labor across sectors—and
the time path of aggregate productivity across countries. We measure sectoral la-
bor productivity across countries using a model of the structural transformation.
Productivity differences across countries are large in agriculture and services and
smaller in manufacturing. Over time, productivity gaps have been substantially
reduced in agriculture and industry but not nearly as much in services. These
sectoral productivity patterns generate implications in the model that are broadly
consistent with the cross-country data. We find that productivity catch-up in in-
dustry explains about 50% of the gains in aggregate productivity across countries,
whereas low productivity in services and the lack of catch-up explain all the expe-
riences of slowdown, stagnation, and decline observed across countries.
I. INTRODUCTION
It is a well-known observation that over the last fifty years
countries have experienced remarkably different paths of eco-
nomic Looking at the behavior of GDP per hour
in individual countries relative to that in the United States, we
find experiences of sustained catch-up, catch-up followed by a
slowdown, stagnation, and even decline. (See Figure I for some
illustrative ) Consider, for instance, the experience of
Ireland. Between 1960 and 2004, GDP per hour in Ireland relative
to that of the United States rose from about 35% to 75%.3 Spain
also experienced a period of rapid catch-up to the United States
from 1960 to around 1990, a period during which relative GDP
per hour rose from about 35% to 80%. Around 1990, however, this
∗We thank Robert Barro, three anonymous referees, and Francesco Caselli for
very useful and ments. We also thank Tasso