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> Why might you care? Here is one fact from that survey: within a narrowly defined industry category, the difference in measured output from the 5th to the 95th
by jacobolus 4y ago
> Why might you care? Here is one fact from that survey: within a narrowly defined industry category, the difference in measured output from the 5th to the 95th percentiles of the productivity distribution can be a factor of 2! To emphasize: two firms with the same measured inputs, but one produces twice as much output than the other. This is visible across many industry categories. It’s a fascinating problem and well worthy of study.
Having seen inside a few organizations of various types, I am shocked that the difference is so small.
- huitzitziltzin 4y agoI bet computing 1st to 99th %-ile would be even worse. Also I believe the result they cite is on average. I bet the extremes of the 5-95 comparison can get crazy. Find the “right” industry and I bet you can make it really horrible.
- fsckboy 4y ago> I bet computing 1st to 99th %-ile would be even worse that's just a property of the normal distribution: if you know the difference between 5 and 95, you know the rest of the curve.
- huitzitziltzin 4y agoYou are misunderstanding something. The comparison they are reporting is a comparison between the 5th and 95th percentiles of the empirical distribution of measured productivities. The normal distribution has nothing to do with this.