The importance of frontier firms in total factor productivity in New Zealand, 2001-2016

Using firm-level panel data and estimating production functions for 37 industries, covering the 2001–16 period, this paper finds little evidence of major changes in frontier TFP over 2001–16, and limited evidence of catching-up; that is, it seems very likely that New Zealand firms at the national frontier are not keeping pace with global frontier firms. The most important conclusion from this study is that while there is some evidence of a failure of productivity-enhancing technologies to diffuse from firms operating at the national productivity frontier, the major problem is failure of productivity-enhancing technologies to diffuse from firms operating at the global productivity frontier. New Zealand’s major problem is that frontier firms are underperforming because of their characteristics (e.g. small and lacking international connections) while productivity is overall adversely affected by a lack of competition, which generally creates barriers to exiting and insufficient reallocation of market shares from lower- to higher-productivity firms

A data bank of regional economic time series for UK manufacturing industries

SIGLELD:6219.781(18) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

A tale of two cycles: closure, downsizing and productivity growth in UK manufacturing, 1973-89

This article uses the ARD, the new longitudinal database of the Census of Production, to analyse productivity at the establishment level in the two cycles of I973-9 and 1979-89. Contrary to a commonly held view, closures did not play a major role in accounting for productivity growth in 1979-89. Establishments which shut had lower productivity than survivors but the exits were replaced by entrants whose productivity was also lower. Hence most of productivity growth was due to growth within survivors. Most productivity growth occurred in establishments which reduced employment. But despite an overall fall of a quarter in employment, 16 per cent of productivity growth occurred in establishments which expanded employment. The main difference between 1973-9 and 1979-89 was in the productivity growth rate amongst survivors. In 1973-9, it was negative overall and over half of employment in I973 was in establishments where productivity subsequently fell