Labour Productivity Superstatistics

TL;DR

This paper applies superstatistics theory to labour productivity, revealing power-law distributions across different economic levels and proposing a model where fluctuating demand explains these empirical laws.

Contribution

It introduces a superstatistics framework to explain labour productivity distributions, contrasting with traditional equilibrium economic theories.

Findings

Labour productivity follows power-law distributions across workers, firms, and sectors.

The Pareto index decreases with higher levels of aggregation.

A superstatistics model with fluctuating demand explains the observed distributions.

Abstract

We discuss superstatistics theory of labour productivity. Productivity distribution across workers, firms and industrial sectors are studied empirically and found to obey power-distributions, in sharp contrast to the equilibrium theories of mainstream economics. The Pareto index is found to decrease with the level of aggregation, {\it i.e.}, from workers to firms and to industrial sectors. In order to explain these phenomenological laws, we propose a superstatistics framework, where the role of the fluctuating temperature is played by the fluctuating demand.