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A Study of the Movements of Productivity in Individual Industries in the United Kingdom 1968-79

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

G.C. Wenban-Smith
G.C. Wenban-Smith*
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
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Abstract

This article examines the movement of output per employee in one hundred and sixty industries between 1968 and 1979. It concludes that the slowdown in productivity and output growth rates observed for aggregate manufacturing industry since 1973 was fairly typical of the experience of most individual industries; and that no shift in the relation between productivity and output growth could be identified.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 97 , August 1981 , pp. 57 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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References

(1) This paper reports the results of work which is part of a wider investigation into recent and prospective productivity trends in the UK, in progress at NIESR and financed by HM Treasury.

(2) See, for example W. Godley and J. Shepherd, ‘Long term growth and short term policy’, National Institute Economic Review, No. 29, August, 1964.

(3) See, e.g. E. F. Denison, Accounting for slower growth, the United States in the 70s, Brookings Institution, 1979.

(4) See the discussion on pp. 186-7 in The Medium Term, G. D. N. Worswick and F. T. Blackaby ed, Heinemann for NIESR, 1974.

(1) Roughly speaking, increases in output per unit of input account for rather less than half of the observed increase in national income in advanced industrial countries. See I. Elliot in the NEDO Monograph The UK and West German Manu facturing Industry 1954-72, ed. M. Panic, and B. Carlsson in The Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research, Stockholm 1979-80 Research Program.

(2) See W. E. G. Salter, ‘Productivity and technical change’, Cambridge University Press, 1960 and I. Elliot, op. cit.

(3) See, for example, C. F. Pratten, ‘The Reasons for the slow economic progress for the British economy’, Oxford Economic Papers, 1972.

(1) More information is available in the Censuses of Production, but it is not possible to obtain time series from them. Selected years could be used to obtain data for the investigation of a particular aspect of economic behaviour, and this may be done later in the project. R. F. Wragg and J. A. S. Robertson, in ‘Post-war trends in employment, productivity, output, labour costs and prices by industry in the United Kingdom’, Department of Employment Research Paper No. 3, based their work on the Census of Production for the end-years of the periods under study.

(2) See, e.g., J. S. L. McCombie, ‘What still remains of Kaldor's laws?’ Economic Journal, March 1981.

(3) See, e.g., Electrical machinery, MLH 361, below.

(1) R2 is the coefficient of multiple determination, or squared multiple correlation coefficient, adjusted for the number of degrees of freedom. DW is the Durbin-Watson coefficient, testing for autocorrelation in the regression residuals.

(2) i.e. to see whether the variance of the residuals depended on the size of the output change.

(1) A description of the industry growth rates and illustrative graphs will be published in a NIESR Discussion Paper.

(2) MLH 412 is spinning and doubling on the cotton and flax systems; MLH 413 is weaving of cotton, linen and man- made fibres; MLH 414 is woollen and worsted.

(1) Tom Sheriff found that changes in the demographic structure of the labour force probably had only a small effect on productivity growth. See T. D. Sheriff. ‘UK productivity and the age-sex composition of the labour force’. National Institute Economic Review, No. 90, November 1979.