Productivity in development policy literature: A critical survey

This dissertation critically examines the mainstream contention that productivity growth, supposedly achieved by increasing ‘productive’ employment, is the best route to improved living standards for the poor in developing countries. Tracing the intellectual history of the neoclassical conceptualization of productivity, I first situate the debate concerning the merits of productivity growth as a means to poverty reduction within the contentious theoretical debates - the so-called Cambridge Capital Controversies – of the 1950s-70s. In a subsequent section, I critically investigate the instrumentalizaton of the conventional conceptualization and measurement of productivity within the so-called Inclusive Growth paradigm that dominates contemporary international development policy. Reflecting on the implications of this body of work in terms policy recommendations and the distribution of gains resulting from the production process, my argument is: The obsession with boosting ‘productive employment’ among the poor in the global south completely ignores the elephant in the room – namely, unequal power relations between wage labourers and the owners of capital, which virtually ensures that any gains accomplished in the production process are captured by the latter.