An Investigation of the Stagnation in Productivity of the Japanese Economy in the 90s Using the Hicks-Moorsteen Productivity Index

本文在希克斯-穆尔斯汀生产率指数方法的基础上发展了一种新的生产率分解分析方法，并将其应用于考察90年代日本经济的生产率停滞。与基于索洛残差或Tornqvist指数的标准分析不同，提出的生产率分解分析的优点是允许存在生产低效。就我们的目的而言，这很有吸引力，因为它使低效对生产率的影响是可衡量的。形式上，我们证明了Hicks-Moorsteen生产率指数可以分解为技术进步因素、效率因素、规模因素和投入产出的混合效应因素。实证分析使用了三个数据集：包括日本在内的经合组织17个国家(1965-1990年)的专家小组、日本47个县(1981-2000年)的专家小组以及日本宏观经济和产业的时间序列(1981-1998)。这些结果揭示了日本经济生产率变化的一些有趣方面。首先，80年代的生产力仍在追赶发达国家的过程中，效率的提高使生产率在整个80年代提高到发达国家的水平。第二，90年代的生产率停滞不前，主要是因为技术进步不活跃，而1996年生产率的暂时回升是由反映需求增加的效率提高推动的。第三，信息技术的进步可能会通过提高技术进步因素，在90年代末提高制造业几个部门的生产率。

This study develops a new decomposition analysis of productivity based on the Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index approach, and applied it to investigating the stagnation in productivity of the Japanese economy in the 90s. Unlike the standard analysis based on the Solow residuals or The Tornqvist index, the proposed decomposition analysis of productivity has an advantage that the existence of productive inefficiencies is allowed. For our purpose, this is appealing because it makes the impacts of inefficiencies on productivity measurable. Formally, we show that the Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index can be decomposed into the factors of technical advance, efficiency, scale and mix effects of inputs and outputs. The empirical analysis is conducted using three data sets : a panel on OECD 17 countries (1965-1990) including Japan, a panel on 47 Japanese prefectures (1981-2000), and time series of the Japanese macro economy and industries (1981-1998). Those results reveal some interesting aspects of productivity change in the Japanese economy. First, productivity in the 80s was still on the process of catching up the developed countries in the sense that improvement in efficiency raised the productivity toward the level of the developed countries throughout the 80s. Second, the stagnant productivity in the 90s is mainly attributable to inactive technical advance while a temporary recovery of productivity in 1996 was driven by the improvement in efficiency reflecting an increase in demand. Third, an advance in IT might raise the productivity of several sectors in the manufacturing industry in the late 90s by boosting the technical advance factor.