رشد FTP بخش تولیدی سنگاپور:یک انالیز تجزیه ای

Singapore has been criticized recently for experiencing insignificant total factor productivity (TFP) growth. This paper examines whether this criticism is valid in the context of the manufacturing sector of Singapore. Using new data and the stochastic production frontier approach, TFP growth is decomposed into technological progress and changes in technical efficiency. While the results could not reject the hypothesis that Singapore's output growth is mostly input-driven, they show that, despite technological progress, technical inefficiency is the cause for the low and declining TFP growth in the manufacturing sector.J. Comp. Econom., December 2000, 28(4), pp. 828–839. The University of Queensland; Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.

Although many total factor productivity (TFP) studies have been undertaken recently on the manufacturing sector in Singapore, their conclusions differ. For example, Tsao (1985) showed an insignificant 0.08% TFP growth for the man-

Using panel data and applying the stochastic frontier model, TFP growth in Singapore’s manufacturing sector was shown in decline in the late 1980’s and become negative in the early 1990’s. Confirming the results of Young (1995), output growth was found to be input-driven since the latter constitutes a higher proportion of output growth. Evidence provided shows that, although the manufacturing sector experienced technological progress, the overwhelming deterioration in technical efficiency resulted in low and declining TFP growth for the sector. With limits on the acquisition of and access to better and newer technology, technological progress can no longer sustain long-term growth. Hence, improvements in technical efficiency hold the key to such growth in the future. A worthwhile extension of this paper would be an empirical exercise to identify the factors that affect the efficient use of resources in manufacturing industries to provide important policy implications for Singapore’s long-term economic growth.