Suchergebnisse

Au printemps 2017, nous avons consacré un dossier spécial au ralentissement des gains de productivité et à ses conséquences sur l'évolution économique des pays concernés (n° 417). En effet, alors que le changement technologique se diffusait à grande vitesse dans tous les secteurs de l'économie, la hausse de productivité à laquelle on aurait pu s'attendre n'était pas au rendez-vous. Cinq ans plus tard, et alors que la crise de la Covid a entraîné une accélération considérable de la diffusion du numérique, ce rebond de productivité va-t-il finir par se produire ? Antonin Bergeaud, Gilbert Cette et Rémy Lecat, qui avaient contribué à cette réflexion en 2017, font ici le point sur les évolutions sur longue période de la productivité et les perspectives qui pourraient découler, non seulement des conséquences induites par la crise de la Covid, mais aussi de la crise énergétique en germe suite au conflit russo-ukrainien. Après avoir rappelé le paradoxe de Solow (selon lequel la diffusion des nouvelles technologies est visible partout sauf dans les statistiques de productivité), ainsi que la très faible croissance de la productivité constatée cette dernière décennie dans les pays développés, ils soulignent le rôle joué historiquement par les précédentes crises (choc pétrolier de 1973, Grande Récession de 2009) dans ces évolutions. Puis ils présentent les interprétations qui prévalent actuellement s'agissant de l'impact des crises en cours sur l'évolution de la productivité. Ainsi la crise de la Covid, choc exogène, n'aurait pas d'impact notable sur les tendances de long terme à l'œuvre avant 2020 et pourrait même accélérer la venue du choc de productivité attendu de longue date ; en revanche, la crise énergétique liée à l'urgence de sortir de la dépendance aux énergies fossiles (précipitée par la guerre) et au défi de la transition écologique, qui constitue « un choc d'offre », nettement plus structurel, pourrait avoir un effet inverse et faire baisser la productivité, avec des conséquences macroéconomiques potentiellement très douloureuses pour un pays comme la France. S.D.

Depuis quelques années, les débats se multiplient, en particulier dans le milieu des économistes, quant aux perspectives d'évolution de la productivité et, par extension, de la croissance économique. Alors que l'on n'a jamais autant parlé de l'essor des technologies numériques et des bouleversements qu'elles pourraient entraîner, on constate en effet, sur la période récente et dans un grand nombre de pays dits avancés, une tendance à la baisse du rythme de croissance de la productivité. Or, si elle se confirmait, celle-ci pourrait aller de pair avec une ère de stagnation économique durable. C'est pourquoi Futuribles engage, dans ce numéro, une réflexion sur la question du ralentissement des gains de productivité et ses conséquences sur l'évolution économique des pays concernés, ainsi que sur l'évolution de l'emploi et des métiers. Antonin Bergeaud, Gilbert Cette et Rémy Lecat, qui travaillent sur le sujet depuis plusieurs années, ouvrent le dossier par un panorama de l'évolution sur longue période de la productivité du travail dans les principaux pays développés, avec un focus sur le ralentissement observé ces deux dernières décennies. Ils présentent, au regard des travaux publiés sur le sujet, les origines possibles de cette baisse et les perspectives envisageables, à plus long terme, en matière d'évolution du rythme de croissance de la productivité (tassement ou rebond ?). Ils montrent enfin, compte tenu des divergences observées entre pays développés (en particulier vis-à-vis des États-Unis), quelles sont les marges de rattrapage pour l'Europe. S.D.

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers' convergence could therefore constitute an important part of productivity growth at the macroeconomic level. This article sheds light on this convergence process in the 1990s and the 2000s in France and on some of the factors which can explain it. Productivity convergence was stronger for labour productivity than for total factor productivity. But most importantly the speed of convergence has slowed during the course of the 1990s, a fact which is explained principally by the acceleration of the productivity of firms on the technological frontier. Three possible explanations of these stylised facts are considered: globalisation, information technology, and competition. Globalisation and information technology may have benefited the most productive firms more and the growth of competition may at the same time have stimulated the productivity of firms at the frontier while discouraging the convergence of the least productive firms.

AbstractThis article reports estimates of the impact of service regulation reform on the productivity of French and Italian firms in retail, transports and professional services over the period 1998–2007. We implement a two‐stage least squares estimation: the first‐stage instruments mark‐ups, a financial measure of rents, with barriers to entry and the second stage estimates the impact of instrumented mark‐ups on total factor productivity (TFP), a real measure of firm efficiency. We find that entry barriers lower firm productivity by raising mark‐ups and rents. These estimates imply that, if French and Italian regulators had adopted the OECD best practices in terms of entry barriers, firms in these sectors would have increased their TFP level by five percentage points. We do not find any robust evidence of a non‐linear relation between mark‐up and productivity.

This paper provides a tool to build climate change scenarios to forecast Gross Domestic Product (GDP), modelling both GDP damage due to climate change and the GDP impact of mitigating measures. It adopts a supply-side, long-term view, with 2060 and 2100 horizons. It is a global projection tool (30 countries / regions), with assumptions and results both at the world and the country / regional level. Five different types of energy inputs are taken into account according to their CO2 emission factors. Full calibration is possible at each stage, with estimated or literature-based default parameters. In particular, Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which is a major source of uncertainty on future growth and hence on CO2 emissions, is endogenously determined, with a rich modeling encompassing energy prices, investment prices, education, structural reforms and decreasing return to the employment rate. We present four scenarios: Business As Usual (BAU), with stable energy prices relative to GDP price; Decrease of Renewable Energy relative Price (DREP), with the relative price of non CO2 emitting electricity decreasing by 2% a year; Low Carbon Tax (LCT) scenario with CO2 emitting energy relative prices increasing by 1% per year; High Carbon Tax (HCT) scenario with CO2 emitting energy relative prices increasing by 3% per year. At the 2100 horizon, global GDP incurs a loss of 12% in the BAU, 10% in the DREP, 8% in the Low Carbon Tax scenario and 7% in the High Carbon Tax scenario. This scenario exercise illustrates both the "tragedy of the horizon", as gains from avoided climate change damage net of damage from mitigating policies are negative in the medium-term and positive in the long-term, and the "tragedy of the commons", as climate change damage is widely dispersed and particularly severe in developing economies, while mitigating policies should be implemented in all countries, especially in advanced countries modestly affected by climate change but with large CO2 emission contributions.

This paper provides a tool to build climate change scenarios to forecast Gross Domestic Product (GDP), modelling both GDP damage due to climate change and the GDP impact of mitigating measures. It adopts a supply-side, long-term view, with 2060 and 2100 horizons. It is a global projection tool (30 countries / regions), with assumptions and results both at the world and the country / regional level. Five different types of energy inputs are taken into account according to their CO2 emission factors. Full calibration is possible at each stage, with estimated or literature-based default parameters. In particular, Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which is a major source of uncertainty on future growth and hence on CO2 emissions, is endogenously determined, with a rich modeling encompassing energy prices, investment prices, education, structural reforms and decreasing return to the employment rate. We present four scenarios: Business As Usual (BAU), with stable energy prices relative to GDP price; Decrease of Renewable Energy relative Price (DREP), with the relative price of non CO2 emitting electricity decreasing by 2% a year; Low Carbon Tax (LCT) scenario with CO2 emitting energy relative prices increasing by 1% per year; High Carbon Tax (HCT) scenario with CO2 emitting energy relative prices increasing by 3% per year. At the 2100 horizon, global GDP incurs a loss of 12% in the BAU, 10% in the DREP, 8% in the Low Carbon Tax scenario and 7% in the High Carbon Tax scenario. This scenario exercise illustrates both the "tragedy of the horizon", as gains from avoided climate change damage net of damage from mitigating policies are negative in the medium-term and positive in the long-term, and the "tragedy of the commons", as climate change damage is widely dispersed and particularly severe in developing economies, while mitigating policies should be implemented in all countries, especially in advanced countries modestly affected by climate change but with large CO2 emission contributions.

We identify two counteracting effects of credit access on productivity growth: on the one hand, better access to credit makes it easier for entrepreneurs to innovate; on the other hand, better credit access allows less efficient incumbent firms to remain longer on the market, thereby discouraging entry of new and potentially more efficient innovators. We first develop a simple model of firm dynamics and innovation‐based growth with credit constraints, where the above two counteracting effects generate an inverted‐U relationship between credit access and productivity growth. Then we test our theory on a comprehensive French manufacturing firm‐level dataset. We first show evidence of an inverted‐U relationship between credit constraints and productivity growth when we aggregate our data at the sectoral level. We then move to firm‐level analysis, and show that incumbent firms with easier access to credit experience higher productivity growth, but that they also experience lower exit rates, particularly the least productive firms among them. To support these findings, we exploit the 2012 Eurosystem's Additional Credit Claims programme as a quasi‐experiment that generated an exogenous extra supply of credits for a subset of incumbent firms.