Pharaoh and the Prospects for Productivity in HHR

Abstract

When Pharaoh refused to supply straw, productivity plummeted in the Egyptian brick industry. But Pharaoh had other concerns. Anyway, the costs fell on Israelites, not Egyptians. Productivity improvement in the health sector is similarly constrained by competing objectives, and by the distribution of resulting gains and losses. Furthermore, health services have value only insofar as they improve health outcomes. Increased output of ineffective services is not productivity in any meaningful sense. Yet most of the literature on health human resources productivity focuses on outputs, not outcomes, ignoring serious questions about effectiveness. Proposals to refine the treatment of the health sector within the national accounts are similarly flawed. Proliferation of beneficial, harmful or simply unnecessary services would all be recorded as "productivity growth."