![](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/67184/cover/9780521867184.jpg)
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Measuring comparative productivity performance
- Part II Explaining comparative productivity performance
- 5 Technology, organisational change and the industrialisation of services
- 6 Investment in physical and human capital
- 7 Competition and the institutional framework
- Part III Reassessing the performance of British market services
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Investment in physical and human capital
from Part II - Explaining comparative productivity performance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Measuring comparative productivity performance
- Part II Explaining comparative productivity performance
- 5 Technology, organisational change and the industrialisation of services
- 6 Investment in physical and human capital
- 7 Competition and the institutional framework
- Part III Reassessing the performance of British market services
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The industrialisation of services was accompanied by investments in physical and human capital, which are documented and analysed in this chapter. Sectoral data on physical capital are available for services to only a very limited extent before World War II, and there are significant problems of international comparability even after World War II. The available data nevertheless suggest a limited contribution of international differences in capital intensity to explaining international differences in labour productivity in services. However, a large part of overall capital in services consists of buildings, with at best an indirect link to labour productivity. It is therefore also useful to focus more narrowly on office machinery, which suggests a more significant role for investment in physical capital.
In human capital formation, it is important to consider both education and vocational training, and to distinguish between higher (university degree equivalent) and intermediate (between school leaving and degree equivalent) levels of vocational training (Prais, 1995: 17). Adding together the different types of human capital formation, Britain suffered little human capital disadvantage relative to either Germany or the United States before World War II, particularly in services. However, after World War II any higher-level advantage that Britain had enjoyed over the United States in services from the large number of qualified members of professional associations was offset by the spread of mass higher education in the United States.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850–2000British Performance in International Perspective, pp. 107 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006