2020/36 | LEM Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||||||
Distant but close in sight. Firm-level evidence on French-German productivity gaps in manufacturing |
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Thomas Grebel, Mauro Napoletano and Lionel Nesta |
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Keywords | |||||||||||||||||
International productivity gaps; productivity distributions; firm level comparisons.
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JEL Classifications | |||||||||||||||||
L10, N10, D24
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Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
We study the productivity level distributions of manufacturing firms in France and Germany,
and how these distributions evolved across the Great Recession. We show the presence
of a systematic productivity advantage of German firms over French ones in the decade
2003-2013, but the gap has narrowed down after the Great Recession. Convergence is
explained by the better growth performance of French firms in the post-recession period,
especially of those located in the top percentiles of the productivity distribution. We also
highlight the role of sectoral growth, firm size and export intensity in explaining the above
convergence. In contrast, the contribution of allocative efficiency was small.
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