Employment and Total Factor Productivity Convergence

SUMMARY Using a new 16‐country data set we demonstrate a robust negative employment‐total factor productivity trade‐off 1870–2004. Widely disparate cross country employment growth had a powerful long term influence on productivity dispersion. Unexceptional US productivity growth principally resulted from her exceptional employment growth rather than from her initially high productivity levels. The negative externalities associated with higher employment are shown to have dominated the diminishing of total factor productivity gaps among the 16 countries, and led to the erosion of US productivity leadership over the twentieth century.