Industrial Labour Productivity in Non-Western Countries Since 1945

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is a limited one: to present the available data on trends in labour productivity for all countries except the United States, Japan and the nations of Western Europe (the latter are covered in a separate paper by Angus Maddison). In the course of our research, we discovered quickly that pre-World War II data are to be found for only a handful of the countries with which we are concerned, so that we were obliged to take the year 1945 as the inception of the period with which we deal — and even then, we have not always been able to go back that far. We have generally eschewed attempts at analysis of the underlying factors which produced the observed trends. Presumably, that is the function of the rest of the papers submitted to this section.

The authors are grateful to Professor Dale Jorgenson for his advice at various stages in the preparation of this paper.