آیا فناوری اطلاعات باعث افزایش بهره وری ژاپن شده است؟

A standard growth accounting exercise indicates that, after Japan's “lost decade,” its overall total-factor-productivity (TFP) growth has increased notably since 2000. This productivity revival has been limited, however, to information technology (IT) production—has not been a broad-based productivity acceleration like that seen in the United States after the mid-1990s. This paper examines the relationship between IT and productivity gains by employing the “augmented” growth accounting framework for Japanese industry-level data from 1975 through 2005. In particular, we estimate “purified” technology change at industry level by accounting for cyclical mismeasurement of inputs. We find that the post-2000 increase in overall TFP growth does indeed appear to arise from an increase in technological change. Furthermore, the pickup in technology growth has occurred not only in the production of IT but also in the industries that use IT intensively. Our results suggest the possibility that stories of IT as a general purpose technology (GPT) could apply to Japan as well as to the United States.

After the mid-1990s, labor and total factor productivity (TFP) accelerated sharply in the United States, but not in Japan. A growing body of research has explored the robustness of the U.S. productivity acceleration; it generally concludes that information technology (IT) was a key driver of the U.S. acceleration.1 By contrast, in terms of cross-country productivity evidence, Gust and Marquez (2002), among others, document that Japan (and many European countries) did not experience such IT-driven pickup in productivity growth in the late 1990s. Why did Japan not benefit from IT, even though it had access to the same technology as the United States did? To the extent that one expects ideas – especially when embedded in easily traded physical capital – to diffuse easily across borders, the lack of productivity acceleration in Japan has puzzled many economists and policymakers.

This paper introduces new estimates of aggregate and sectoral technology growth for the Japanese economy over the years 1975–2005. The estimates are based on the “augmented” growth accounting framework controlling for non-technological cyclical factors. Using this approach, we were able to paint a rich picture of recent productivity developments in Japan. The Japanese economy has enjoyed since 2000 an increase in the rate of productivity growth, driven largely by an increase in the rate of technological progress. Furthermore, our industry results indicate that the post-2000 resurgence in technology has been an IT-centered story, with increases in the rate of technology change for both IT-producing and IT-using sectors, partly offset by step-downs in other IT-isolated industries. If our results are accepted, the Solow paradox has been, at least in part, resolved in Japan after 2000, a lag of roughly 5 years behind the United States.