A Model of the Productivity Gap: Convergence or Divergence?

A notable feature of the post-war experience of productivity growth is a tendency to convergence in productivity levels among a selected sample of advanced capitalist economies. This tendency has been identified and discussed by a number of observers.2 However, the strength and generality of this tendency are a matter of dispute.3 Even if it is accepted for a specific subsample of countries, it remains evident that there is great diversity in the actual pattern of experience of a wider class of countries, including the less developed countries, observed over the same period. Among this wider class, one finds the coexistence of both convergence and divergence, with no clear and unambiguous case for either tendency to prevail across the whole set of countries.4 This result indicates that the picture is more complex than appears at first sight and, correspondingly, calls for a deeper investigation.