Productivity Changes in the European Union: Structural and Competitive Aspects

Abstract

There are many factors influencing the level and changes of the labour productivity. One of the useful methods of identifying these factors is shift-share approach. It makes it possible to determine if the sectoral structure or the level of competitiveness of the economy affects the dynamics and differentiation of labour productivity. The research concerned countries of the European Union, covered the period of 1999-2006 and was conducted for six main economic sectors. All examined countries were characterized by constant growth of labour productivity which was mainly caused by the increasing productivity in market financial services. The basic reason of productivity diversification was a country's competitiveness. The positive relation between sectoral structure and regional component also occurred.

Exploring the recent upsurge in productivity disparities among European regions

“…Over the last two decades various studies have agreed that differences in labour productivity between European regions can be attributed to the intrinsic characteristics of the regions rather than to their industry mix (Batóg & Batóg, 2007; Esteban, 2000; Ezcurra et al., 2005; Le Gallo et al., 2003; Le Gallo & Kamarianakis, 2011). These region‐specific productivity differentials, which are uniform across sectors, have been associated with intrinsic regional characteristics such as endowments of human and physical capital, investment in R&D and even institutions.…”

“…María José Murgui-García https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-1278 ENDNOTES 1 The first person to introduce the shift-share approach to the study of regional productivity growth was Esteban (2000), who modelled regional productivity growth as the sum of three components: structural change, differential industry productivity and the allocative effect. This form of shift-share has also been used by Le Gallo et al (2003), Le Gallo and Dall'Erba et al (2008), Batóg and Batóg (2007) and, with a slight variation, by Ezcurra et al (2005) and Le Gallo and Kamarianakis (2011), who also introduced spatial econometrics. 2 This idea is based on the famous Kuznets curve (Kuznets, 1955), which postulates the same relationship between a country per capita income and personal inequality.…”

“…This form of shift‐share has also been used by Le Gallo et al. (2003), Le Gallo and Dall'Erba et al (2008), Batóg and Batóg (2007) and, with a slight variation, by Ezcurra et al. (2005) and Le Gallo and Kamarianakis (2011), who also introduced spatial econometrics.…”

Au revoir Paris! Spanish regions closer to the EU average and further away from the leaders

“…9 The relevance of the 'within-industry' component has been associated with intrinsic regional attributes that make some regions more productive than others. These involve uneven endowments of human capital, infrastructures and connectivity, investment in R&D and even institutions (Bat og & Bat og, 2007;Esteban, 2000;Ezcurra et al, 2005;Le Gallo et al, 2003;Le Gallo & Kamarianakis, 2011).…”

Application of Kernel Estimation in Analysis of Labour Productivity of the Largest Polish Firms in 2004-2008

“…To make the diagrams more legible the upper limits of changeability intervals of the labour productivity distributions were set at PLN 6,000 thousand. It turned out that in all the years and kernel types the distributions demonstrated strong right-sided asymmetry15 and were characterised by a global maximum16 . Another regularity was observed as well -the maximum was moving towards higher values of labour productivity and it was getting more and more flat in the subsequent years.…”