On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 10:08:03AM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > I was reading a different table and the text. I think I misread the > slope as the total productivity. Its interesting that Brad's paper > has the US staying in front of those countries in productivity. France > is at 98% of the US productivity in '98. Since the trend since then > has been superior US productivity, we see the difference there.
> Another, more important difference relating to per capita GDP is the > hours worked by Americans. Here's the '98 data for that: > France 580 > Germany 670 > Italy 637 > United Kingdom 682 > 12 West Europe 657 > Ireland 672 > Spain 648 > United States 791 That is odd that Angus Maddison's "Level of GDP per hour worked" in 1998 differ so much from IMF's "GDP per hour" in 2001. It certainly shouldn't have changed so much in 3 years. I think your point about hours worked is important. Using Maddison's 791 hours and "un-normalizing" the IMF data on that basis, hours worked per head (Maddison) and "average hours worked" (IMF) looks like --------------------- IMF Maddison country --------------------- 791 791 US 638 682 UK 611 637 Italy 584 580 France 551 670 Germany --------------------- Maddison's number is 22% higher for Germany, 7% higher for UK, 4% higher for Italy, and 1% lower for France. IMF does not specify whether the "average hours worked" is per capita, or per employed worker. Maddison's numbers are specified as "per head" (per capita), and per employed worker numbers should be higher than per capita numbers (due to unemployment). But IMF's numbers are generally LOWER than Maddison's, so something strange is going on. Also, Maddison appears to use the logical formula GDP per hour = GDP per capita / hours worked per capita whereas the IMF chart appears to do some correction for "labor force participation" which isn't clear to me. It looks like IMF's data may have resulted from some weird manipulation, whereas Maddison's data seem reasonable to me. (Or the number of hours worked per capita by Germans went down 22% between 1998 and 2001) -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
