Comparative in British and American Manufacturing

This article presents the results of a benchmark comparison of the relative level of manufacturing productivity in the UnitedKingdom and the United States for 1987. It shows value added per hour worked in the UK at 58 per cent of the corresponding levelin the United States. The UK appears to show relatively high productivity levels in basic goods industries, including textiles,chemicals and basic metals. The benchmark results are extrapolated backwards to 1968 and forwards to 1990, showing anarrowing of some ten percentage points of the productivity gap between the two countries. It is also shown that differences incapital intensity account for only a small part of the productivity gap.