The Public and Private Marginal Product of Capital

C-Tier
Journal: Economica
Year: 2019
Volume: 86
Issue: 342
Pages: 336-361

Authors (3)

Matt Lowe (not in RePEc) Chris Papageorgiou (International Monetary Fund (I...) Fidel Perez‐Sebastian (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

0.335 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Why does capital not flow to developing countries as predicted by the neoclassical model? What are the direction and degree of capital misallocation across nations? We revisit these questions by removing public capital from total capital to achieve a more accurate estimate of the marginal productivity of private capital. We calculate marginal product of capital schedules in a large sample of advanced and developing countries. Our main result is that, in terms of the Lucas Paradox, private capital is allocated remarkably efficiently across nations. Tentative estimates of the marginal productivity of public capital suggest that the deadweight loss from public capital misallocation across countries can be much larger than that from private capital.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:bla:econom:v:86:y:2019:i:342:p:336-361
Journal Field
General
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-28