Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina

Escuela de Postgrado
Especialidad de Maestra: Economa Agrcola
Examen de Ingls 2007 I.
En base al texto Productivity responda las preguntas siguientes.
A.

Explique en ingls
1. Cules son las definiciones de productividad que presenta Sylvia Nasar?
Sylvia Nasar defines Productivity in two basic ways: a) labor productivity, is
simply output divided by the number of workers or, more often, by the number
of hours worked. Output can be anything from tons of steel to airline miles
flown, but more generally it is some very broad aggregate like gross domestic
product. Measures of labor productivity, however, actually capture the
contribution to output of other inputs than hours worked. b) Total factor
productivity, captures the contribution to output of everything except labor
and capital: innovation, managerial skill, organization, even luck.
The two productivity concepts are related. Increases in labor productivity can
reflect the fact that each worker is better equipped with capitala supermarket
clerk who has an automatic scanner instead of an old-fashioned cash register
or, alternatively, gains in total factor productivity. Thanks to specialization, for
example, Adam Smith's pin factory turned out more pins with the same number
of craftsmen and identical tools. And General Motors' Fremont, California, plant
once one of the worst in the companyhad a productivity turnaround when
it required its workers to use Japanese manufacturing methods.

2. Cmo ha evolucionado la productividad en Estados Unidos?

There are only three ways that a nation can enjoy a rising level of per capita
consumption. First, a bigger proportion of the population can go to work.
Second, a country can borrow from abroad or sell assets to foreigners to pay
for extra imports. Third, the nation can boost productivityeither by investing
a bigger share of national income in plant and equipment or by finding new
ways to increase efficiency.
In fact, the United States has done all three at different times. But there are
limits on how many Americans can join the labor force and on how much
foreigners will lend.
In the United States, labor productivity growth has averaged about 2% a year
for the past century. That means living standards have doubled, on average,
every thirty-five years. America's place in the sun reflects its productivity. The
number one country in the world at any given time has always been the
productivity leader. It was northern Italy from the thirteenth to the sixteenth
centuries, the Dutch republic in the seventeenth and early eighteenth, Britain in
the late eighteenth and most of the nineteenth, and the United States for the
entire twentieth century.
According to the Economic Report of the President [1992], U.S. productivity
growth can be divided into three distinct phases. After averaging 1.9% a year
from 1889 to 1937 and an even stronger 3% during the twenty-five-year boom
that followed World War II, productivity growth has averaged a mere 1% since
1973. In spite of the supply-side revolution of the early eighties (which brought,
among other things, lower inflation and lower marginal tax rates), productivity
growth failed to revive in the past decade.

3. Qu problemas enfrenta ltimamente la productividad en Estados Unidos?

United States in the last years, faces two productivity problems. First, its
productivity growth has slowed sharply since 1973, part of a puzzling
worldwide productivity slow-down. Second, although U.S. productivity is still
the highest in the world by a wide margin$45,918 of GNP per worker in
1990, 25% ahead of Japan and 35% ahead of Germanyits productivity
growth trailed that of other nations in most years since World War II. That has
stoked fears that the United States will eventually fall behind. After all, British
productivity from 1880 to 1990 grew just 1 percentage point more slowly than
that of its trading partnershardly a huge shortfall, but enough to transform
the once proud empire into a second-rate economy in little more than a
lifetime.
As a consequence of slower productivity growth in the past two decades, average
compensation has edged up only slightly faster than the price level. Living standards
have increased largely because more Americans, especially mothers, have been
working, and because the United States has been able to attract capital from abroad to
offset a persistent trade deficit. "Most of the growth slowdown [in per capita income],"
states the Economic Report of the President, "can be traced to a slowdown of
productivity growth."

4. Qu importancia tiene la inversin para la productividad?

The rate of return to capital invested in research and development is very high,
averaging more than 20 percent a year. One reason that investment received
so much attention is growing evidence that countries with high productivity
growth consistently save and invest more than countries with low productivity
growth.
Also more capital per worker should lift output per worker. Baumol writes: "A
substantial part of the superior performance of Japanese growth in labor
productivity may be ascribable not to increasing efficiency but to the
accumulation of capital."

B.En castellano explique a un compaero las diferentes opiniones sobre productividad

De la lectura se desprende, que existen diferentes opiniones sobre productividad,
especialmente al momento de identificar el porque Estados Unidos y el mundo en
general viene observando una disminucin gradual en la tasa de crecimiento de la
productividad, as:

1. Edward Denison, al efectuar un anlisis del porque la productividad a partir de la

dcada de 1970 viene disminuyendo concluye que an no se puede identificar la
causa para que ello suceda..

2. Zvi Griliches. Puntualiza que el lento crecimiento de la demanda agregada por el

consumo de los bienes y servicios como el factor que incide en la prdida de
productividad. Manifiesta adems que ello ha mantenido una gran capacidad
productiva ociosa y desde que los insumos estn desempleados.

3. Dale Jorgenson, un economista de Harvard arguye que la prdida de la

productividad de la dcada de los setenta se explica por el repentino incremento en el
precio del petrleo en 1973, el cual hizo que una buena cantidad del stock de capital
existente, devenga en obsoleto.

4. Baumol, Blackman and Wolf, Manifiestan que todava no est claro que la
productividad est decreciendo lentamente en los estados unidos y en otros lugares.

Sin embargo desde los primeros aos de la dcada del setenta se da el giro en un
anlisis de largo hacia una disminucin en la ruta del crecimiento y decir que ello

es temporal, sera una aberracin.

C. Escriba una carta de diez lneas a su amigo norteamericano Carl Phillip Baumel (que no
sabe espaol y no le gusta leer otro idioma que no sea ingls, entonces la carta debe ser
escrita en ingls, no olvide las frmulas tradicionales de cortesa) informndole los puntos
claves de este artculo de Sylvia Nasar y solicitndole informacin sobre otros artculos
relacionados.

Saturday, March 10

Dear Carl Phillip Baumel

I am interesting about productivity, and I was reading the Sylvia Nasars
paper about it.
In her paper she says that productivity is a basic yardstick of an economys
health; besides she wrote that productivity can be defined in two basic ways:
first labor productivity, is output divided by the number of worker or, more
often, by the number of hours worked; second, total factor productivity,
captures the contribution to output of everything except labor and capital:
innovation, managerial skill, organization, etc.
In last years, United States productivity growth has be decreasing, and some
economists argue three strategies about optimice productivity: Lagging
investment; innovation; and skills.
I am very interesting about productivity, and I will like that you can buy some
American boocks about it.
See you soon.
Filomeno