TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hall,Robert E.
AU  - Jones,Charles I.
TI  - Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6564
PY  - 1999
Y2  - June 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6564
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6564.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert E. Hall
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/723-2215
E-Mail: rehall@gmail.com

Charles I. Jones
Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305-4800
Tel: 510/288-8650
Fax: 650/725-0468
E-Mail: chad.jones@stanford.edu
AB  - Output per worker varies enormously across countries.  Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker   we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries.  At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure.  We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.
ER  -