Labor Productivity in Europe: Evidence from a Sample of Regions

• Authors: Lionel Artige and Rosella Nicolini.
• BSE Working Paper: 285 | September 15
• Keywords: Labor Productivity , productivity determinants , European Regions
• JEL codes: J24, O11, O18, O52
• Labor Productivity
• productivity determinants
• European Regions

The present paper aims at analyzing the sources of labor productivity in Europe at regional level. We study the productivity performance in a sample of twenty European regions belonging to four countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Exploiting the increasing availability of disaggregated data at regional level, we propose both a descriptive statistics and an econometric analysis of productivity sources since 1995. Our main finding is that the levels and sources of labor productivity are rather heterogeneous across the sample. This heterogeneity is found to be associated with disparities both across sectors and regions.