Plant-level determinants of total factor productivity in Great Britain, 1997–2008

Abstract

AcknowledgementsThis work contains statistical data from ONS which is Crown copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and Queen's Printer for Scotland. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates. Abstract This paper examines the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) using a GB plantlevel dataset. Using a systems-GMM approach, it considers the role of the following four plant characteristics: internal and external knowledge; foreign ownership, multi-plant economies of scale and competition; and spatial spillovers and 'place' effects. The sample is disaggregated into manufacturing and services and by technology to show any differences across sectors. In terms of knowledge, undertaking R&D is positively associated with TFP in most sectors. Plant age is generally negatively related to TFP suggesting that the older vintages of technology embodied in the capital of older plants is outweighing any learningby-doing effect. Foreign ownership is positively related to TFP although there is no obvious TFP ranking in terms of which investing country does better, or in terms of the method by which FDI is undertaken. Manufacturing industries are generally found to operate under conditions of increasing returns-to-scale while service industries generally have decreasing returns. Across most sectors, single plant enterprises have higher TFP than plants belonging to multi-plant enterprises operating in only one region, but lower TFP than plants belonging to multi-plant enterprises with plants in more than one region. Industry concentration (proxying competition) has both positive and negative impacts on TFP across sectors. The agglomeration variable is generally positive and significant for services but less so in manufacturing. A measure of diversification is negatively related to TFP for most sectors although this association is only statistically significant for four out of eight sectors. This may suggest that congestion diseconomies are important. Plants located in cities generally perform better than plants in the same region outside of these cities; but with the exception of London, plants in the South-East have higher TFP levels. This suggests that spatial externalities associated with city location are not as important as the benefits of being situated in the South East region.

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