Part One: International Levels of Labor Productivity in Prewar Japanese Manufacturing Industry - Comparison Of Japan, Britain, And The United States

Abstract

The aim of this work is to compare prewar levels of physical productivity of labor in the Japanese manufacturing industry with Britain and the United States in a number of manufacturing sectors. I may symbolically represent the international index of physical labor productivity as follows: Let i be the product which is to be compared, q i the volume of production during the year, li the labor input for that production, subscript 0 the base country (Japan), and subscript 1 the country compared (U.S. or Britain). Then the index of physical productivity, p 10 i is given by