Singapore's manufacturing sector's TFP growth: A decomposition analysis

Singapore has been criticized recently for experiencing insignificant total factor productivity (TFP) growth. This paper examines whether this criticism is valid in the context of the manufacturing sector of Singapore. Using new data and the stochastic production frontier approach, TFP growth is decomposed into technological progress and changes in technical efficiency. While the results could not reject the hypothesis that Singapore's output growth is mostly input-driven, they show that, despite technological progress, technical inefficiency is the cause for the low and declining TFP growth in the manufacturing sector. (C) Academic Press.