Antonin Bergeaud

Productivity trends from 1890 to 2012 in advanced countries

In order to examine innovation diffusion and convergence processes, we study productivity trends, trend breaks and levels for 13 advanced countries over 1890-2012. We highlight two productivity waves, a big one following the second industrial revolution and a small one following the ICT revolution. The first big wave was staggered across countries, hitting the US first in the Interwar years and the rest of the world after World War II. It came long after the actual innovation could be implemented, emphasizing a long diffusion process. The productivity leader changed during the period under study, the Australian and UK leadership becoming a US one during the first part of the XXth century and, for very particular reasons, also a Norwegian, Dutch and French one at least for some years at the end of the XXth century. The convergence process has been erratic, halted by inappropriate institutions, technology shocks, financial crises but above all by wars, which led to major productivity level leaps, downwards for countries experiencing war on their soil, upwards for other countries. Productivity trend breaks are detected following wars, global financial crises, global supply shocks (such as the oil price shocks) and major policy changes (such as structural reforms in Canada or Sweden). The upward trend break for the US in the mid-1990s is confirmed, as well as the downward trend break for the Euro Area in the same period. The downward trend break observed as early as the mid-2000s for the US leads one to question the future contribution of the ICT revolution to productivity enhancement.

The Impact of Exports on Innovation: Theory and Evidence

This paper investigates the effect of export shocks on innovation. On the one hand a positive shock increases market size and therefore innovation incentives for all firms. On the other hand it increases competition as more firms enter the export market. This in turn reduces profits and therefore innovation incentives particularly for firms with low initial productivity. Overall the positive impact of the export shock on innovation is magnified for high productivity firms, whereas it may negatively affect innovation in low productivity firms. We test this prediction with patent, customs and production data covering all French manufacturing firms. To address potential endogeneity issues, we construct firm-level export proxies which respond to aggregate conditions in a firm’s export destinations but are exogenous to firm-level decisions. We show that patenting robustly increases more with export demand for initially more productive firms. This effect is reversed for the least productive firms as the negative competition effect dominates. JEL codes ∗Addresses Aghion: Collège de France, LSE and PSE; Bergeaud: Banque de France and PSE; Lequien: Banque de France and PSE; Melitz: Harvard University and NBER. The authors would like to thank, without implicating Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Elhanan Helpman, Giammario Impullitti, Thierry Mayer, Torsten Persson, Stephen Redding, Thomas Sampson, Dan Trefler, John Van Reenen and participants at the 2017 AEA meeting, the NBER Summer Institute 2017, CIFAR and numerous seminars for useful discussions and advises. This work is supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the “Investissements d’Avenir” program (reference: ANR-10-EQPX-17 Centre d’accès securise aux donnees – CASD)

GDP per capita in advanced countries over the 20th century

This study presents a GDP per capita level and growth comparison across 17 main advanced countries and over the 1890-2013 long period. It proposes also a comparison of the level and growth of the main components of GDP per capita through an accounting breakdown and runs Philips-Sul (2007) convergence tests over GDP per capita and its main components. These components are total factor productivity, capital intensity (capital stock per hours worked), working time and employment rate. Over the whole period, standards of living as measured by GDP per capita experienced a very marked increase in advanced countries, especially because of the surge in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and in capital intensity. The main results of the study are the following: i) All countries experienced at least one big wave of GDP per capita growth during the 20th Century, but of different sizes and in a staggered manner; ii) Almost all countries have suffered from a significant decline in GDP per capita growth during the last decades of the period; iii) The GDP per capita leadership changed among large countries over the period, from the UK until WWI to the US since WWII; iv) There is an overall convergence process among advanced countries, mainly after WWII, relying mostly on capital intensity convergence and then on TFP convergence, while evolutions in hours worked and even more employment rates are more disparate; v) But this convergence process is not continuous and was particularly scattered since 1990, as the convergence of the EA, the UK and Japan to the US GDP per capita level stopped at a large distance, with reforming or structurally flexible countries accelerating thanks to the Information and Communication Technology shock, while some countries such as Japan lingered in crisis; vi) Employment rates and hours worked did not contribute to the overall convergence process, with club convergence very often appearing for these variables among European countries on one side and Anglo-Saxon countries on the other. Dynamics were especially divergent between these two groups since 1974, as opposite labor policies were implemented.

Le produit intérieur brut par habitant sur longue période en France et dans les pays avancés: le rôle de la productivité et de l’emploi

[fre] Sur la periode 1890-2012, le produit interieur brut par habitant a connu une tres forte progression dans les pays avances, principalement grâce a l’augmentation de la productivite globale des facteurs (PGF) et de l’intensite capitalistique. Cette progression, correspondant par exemple en France a un PIB neuf fois plus eleve en fin de periode, n’a pas ete reguliere : elle connait de fortes fluctuations liees a des chocs globaux dont les effets ne sont pas necessairement identiques d’un pays a l’autre. Les hierarchies de PIB par habitant entre pays, qui placent les Etats-Unis au premier rang pendant la plus grande partie du XXe siecle, sont influencees par la PGF et l’intensite capitalistique mais aussi par les ecarts de taux d’emploi et de duree moyenne du travail. Un fort contraste apparait depuis le milieu des annees 1970 concernant la contribution du facteur travail entre les pays anglo-saxons, dont principalement les Etats-Unis, et les autres, en particulier europeens. Du milieu des annees 1970 jusqu’au milieu des annees 1990, cette contribution diminue dans les seconds vis-a-vis des Etats-Unis, ce qui contribue a abaisser le niveau relatif de PIB par habitant. Cette evolution s’inverse en partie des le milieu des annees 1990, en particulier du fait de l’augmentation du taux d’emploi des seniors. Sur l’ensemble de la periode, le PIB par habitant augmente en France dans les memes proportions que dans la zone euro reconstituee. Mais la position francaise se degrade relativement a la zone euro du milieu des annees 1970 au milieu des annees 1990 en raison d’une baisse relative du taux d’emploi. Depuis le milieu des annees 1990, la stabilite de la situation francaise par rapport a l’ensemble de la zone euro resulte d’une baisse relative du PIB par habitant de l’Italie qui compense une hausse relative de celui de l’Allemagne. Les ecarts avec l’Allemagne resultent largement des dynamiques differentes des taux d’emploi.