Relative Prices and Sectoral Productivity
发现服务业内部传统与非传统子类相对价格的收入弹性不同，非传统服务业的生产率跨国差异最大，消除其差异可使跨国收入差距缩小58%。
Abstract The relative price of services rises with development. A standard interpretation of this fact is that productivity differences across countries are larger in manufacturing than in services. The service sector comprises heterogeneous categories and we document that many disaggregated service categories feature a negative income elasticity of relative prices. We divide service industries into two broad categories based on the income gradient of its relative price: traditional services with positive income elasticities and nontraditional services with negative income elasticities of relative prices. Using an otherwise standard multisector development accounting framework extended to include an input–output structure, we find that the cross-country income elasticity of sectoral productivity is large in nontraditional services (1.15), smaller in manufacturing (1.05), and much smaller in traditional services (0.67). Eliminating cross-country productivity differences in nontraditional services reduces aggregate income disparity by 58%, a 7.9-fold reduction in aggregate productivity differences. Heterogeneity between traditional and nontraditional services also has a substantial impact on aggregate productivity.