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Manufacturing Productivity Levels in France and the United Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Bart van Ark
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Extract

International comparisons of levels of labour productivity are rare in the field of productivity analysis. In the case of Anglo-French comparisons, for example, it has already been widely established that the French economy was more slowly transformed from an agricultural economy into an industrial society than the United Kingdom; and that since the last world war manufacturing output has increased much faster in France than in Britain. The aim of the present study is to complement previous comparisons of growth rates of manufacturing productivity in Britain and France with estimates of the current differences in the levels of output per person-hour worked in a dozen branches which constitute the manufacturing sector.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 133 , August 1990 , pp. 62 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

This article compares the output per person-hour worked in the manufacturing sectors of France and the United Kingdom. Estimates are provided for a dozen branches using the same procedure as in an earlier comparison of productivity between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, published in the February edition of this Review. The present study shows that manufacturing productivity in France is higher than in the United Kingdom, but the estimated gap between the two countries is not as great as that found in previous comparisons of British manufacturing productivity levels with Germany and the Netherlands. The article also examines the relation between productivity and scale of production in French and British manufacturing.

(1)

I am grateful to statisticians at the ‘Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques’ (INSÉE) and the ‘Services d'Étude des Stratégies et de Statistiques Industrielles’ (SESSI), both in Paris, for their help in equipping me with the proper statistical information. I benefitted from comments given by participants during the 21 st General Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (Lahnstein, August 1989), and at a workshop of the Centre for Economic Policy Reseach on ‘European Productivity in the Twentieth Century’ (London, March 1990). I am also grateful to Andrew Britton, Angus Maddison, Robin Marris, Geoff Mason, Mary O'Mahony, Nick Oulton, Dirk Pilat, Donald Roy, Hilary Steedman and to an anonymous referee for comments on earlier drafts; and in particular to Sig Prais who advised me at all stages of the research. Financial support for this project was provided by the Training Agency and the Economic and Social Research Council. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the financial sponsors.

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