Labor productivity growth in the United States and other advanced countries has slowed dramatically since the mid-2000s, a major factor in their economic stagnation and political turmoil. Economists have been debating the causes of the slowdown and possible remedies for some years. Unaddressed in this discussion is what happens if the slowdown is not reversed. In this volume, a dozen renowned scholars analyze the impact of sustained lower productivity growth on public finances, social protection, trade, capital flows, wages, inequality, and, ultimately, politics in the advanced industrial world. They conclude that slow productivity growth could lead to unpredictable and possibly dangerous new problems, aggravating inequality and increasing concentration of market power. Facing Up to Low Productivity Growth also proposes ways that countries can cope with these consequences.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD

China’s growth potential has become a hotly debated topic as the economy has reached an income level susceptible to the “middle-income trap” and financial vulnerabilities are mounting after years of rapid credit expansion. However, the existing literature has largely focused on macro level aggregates, which are ill suited to understanding China’s significant structural transformation and its impact on economic growth. To fill the gap, this paper takes a deep dive into China’s convergence progress in 38 industrial sectors and 11 services sectors, examines past sectoral transitions, and predicts future shifts. We find that China’s productivity convergence remains at an early stage, with the industrial sector more advanced than services. Large variations exist among subsectors, with high-tech industrial sectors, in particular the ICT sector, lagging low-tech sectors. Going forward, ample room remains for further convergence, but the shrinking distance to the frontier, the structural shift from industry to services, and demographic changes will put sustained downward pressure on growth, which could slow to 5 percent by 2025 and 4 percent by 2030. Digitalization, SOE reform, and services sector opening up could be three major forces boosting future growth, while the risks of a financial crisis and a reversal in global integration in trade and technology could slow the pace of convergence.

Vollrath challenges our long-held assumption that growth is the best indicator of an economy’s health. Most economists would agree that a thriving economy is synonymous with GDP growth. The more we produce and consume, the higher our living standard and the more resources available to the public. This means that our current era, in which growth has slowed substantially from its postwar highs, has raised alarm bells. But should it? Is growth actually the best way to measure economic success—and does our slowdown indicate economic problems? The counterintuitive answer Dietrich Vollrath offers is: No. Looking at the same facts as other economists, he offers a radically different interpretation. Rather than a sign of economic failure, he argues, our current slowdown is, in fact, a sign of our widespread economic success. Our powerful economy has already supplied so much of the necessary stuff of modern life, brought us so much comfort, security, and luxury, that we have turned to new forms of production and consumption that increase our well-being but do not contribute to growth in GDP. In Fully Grown, Vollrath offers a powerful case to support that argument. He explores a number of important trends in the US economy: including a decrease in the number of workers relative to the population, a shift from a goods-driven economy to a services-driven one, and a decline in geographic mobility. In each case, he shows how their economic effects could be read as a sign of success, even though they each act as a brake of GDP growth. He also reveals what growth measurement can and cannot tell us—which factors are rightly correlated with economic success, which tell us nothing about significant changes in the economy, and which fall into a conspicuously gray area. Sure to be controversial, Fully Grown will reset the terms of economic debate and help us think anew about what a successful economy looks like.

Does economic size matter for economic development outcomes? If so are current policies adequately addressing the role of size in the development process? Using working age population as a proxy for country size, Open and Nimble, systematically analyzes what makes small economies unique. Small economies are not necessarily prone to underdevelopment and in fact can achieve very high income levels. Small economies, however, do tend to be highly open to both international trade and foreign direct investment, have highly specialized export structures, and have large government expenditures relative to their Gross Domestic Product. The export structures of small economies are concentrated in a few products or services and in a small number of export destinations. In turn, this export concentration is associated with terms of trade volatility, which combined with high exposure to international trade, implies that small economies tend to face more volatility on average as external volatility permeates national economic life. Yet small economies tend to compensate for their export concentration by being nimble in the sense of being able to change their production and export structure relatively quickly over time. Moreover, limited territory plays a role in shaping how economies are affected by natural disasters, even when the probability of facing such disasters is not necessarily higher among small than among large economies. The combination of large governments with macroeconomic volatility seems to be associated with low national savings rates in small economies. This combination could be a challenge for long-term growth if productivity growth and foreign investment do not compensate for low domestic savings. The book finishes with some thoughts on how policy makers can respond to these issues through coordinated investments and regional integration efforts, as well as fiscal policy reforms aimed at both increasing public savings and conducting countercyclical fiscal policies.

Growth in a Time of Change: Global and Country Perspectives on a New Agenda is the first of a two-book research project that addresses new issues and challenges for economic growth arising from ongoing significant change in the world economy, focusing especially on technological transformation. The project is a collaboration between the Brookings Institution and the Korea Development Institute. Part I of the book looks at key elements of change from a global perspective. It analyzes how technological change, shifts in investment, and demographic transition are affecting potential economic growth globally and across major groups of economies. The contributors explore possible scenarios for the global economy as the digital revolution drives rapid technological change, including impacts on growth, jobs, income distribution, trade balances, and capital flows. Technology is changing the global configuration of comparative advantage and globalization increasingly has a digital dimension. The implications of these developments for the future of sectors such as manufacturing and for international trade are assessed. Part II of the book addresses new issues in the growth agenda from the perspective of an individual major economy: South Korea. The chapters in this section analyze how macroeconomic developments and technological change are influencing the behavior of households and firms in terms of their decisions to consume, save, and invest. Rising income and wealth inequalities are a major concern globally. Against this backdrop, trends in the labor income share and wage inequalities in South Korea are analyzed in terms of the role played by technology, industrial concentration, shifts in labor demand and supply, and other factors. Throughout the book, the contributors, in their analysis of both global and Korea-specific trends and prospects, place emphasis on drawing implications for policy.

Traditionally, shocks to total factor productivity (TFP) are considered exogenous and the employment response depends on their effect on aggregate demand. We raise the possibility that in response to labor supply shocks firms adjust efficiency, rendering TFP endogenous to firms’ production decisions. We present robust cross-country evidence of a strong negative correlation between growth in TFP and labor inputs over the medium to long run. In addition, when using instruments to capture changes in hours worked that are independent of TFP shocks, we find that cross-country increases in labor input cause reductions in TFP growth. These results have important policy implications, including that low productivity growth in some countries may partly be a side effect of strong labor market performance. By the same token, countries facing a declining workforce, say, because of aging, may see accelerating TFP as firms find better ways of employing workers.