Resource misallocation and production inefficiency: Estimating cross-country differences in macroeconomic performance

Purpose Recent studies have linked differences in aggregate productivity to misallocation of resources across firms. In contrast, the purpose of this paper is to study the macroeconomic performance of OECD economies from a production efficiency point of view and estimated the determinants of (in)efficiency with particular emphasis on misallocation of labor. Design/methodology/approach Following the pioneering work of Battese and Coelli, the authors proposed a parametric methodology to construct a world frontier that serves as a benchmark to compare the relative position of each country. The non-negative technical inefficiency effects are assumed to be a function of explanatory variables. By doing this, determinants of technical inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model. Findings The results revealed that OECD countries to operate efficiently should expand their aggregate output by 22.6 percent without consuming more resources. A novel finding is that higher skill mismatch is associated with higher production inefficiency. Conversely, more flexible labor markets, and better management and human resource practices, lowered the inefficiency in production. The paper also analyzed the underlying factors driving skill misallocation in the job market. In this regard, a well-functioning education and training system and greater flexibility in the determination of wages are associated with lower levels of mismatch between the skills of individuals and those required by the jobs. Practical implications The measurement of the productive efficiency of an economy (or country) is crucial to governments. It is important to know how far a given economy can be expected to increase its output by simply increasing its efficiency, without absorbing further resources. In other words, it is relevant to know if a country could produce more with the same resources and, therefore, could increase per capita income and welfare. In this type of analysis what also matters is to identify what factors or variables explain that greater or lesser ability of a country to convert its resources into aggregate production. Originality/value Much research on efficiency measurement has focused on the firm or industry level, mainly to study the efficiency of financial institutions. Efficiency studies using aggregated data across countries are rare in the literature of efficiency. This paper aimed to contribute to filling that shortage evaluating the macroeconomic performance of a sample of OECD countries from the production efficiency point of view.