A Note about the Relationship among Transaction Costs,Institutions and Productivity Growth

In order to test the Fuess and van den Berg [I9921 hypothesis on the influence of the increasing transactions sector's costs on the total factor productivity growth rate, the authors perform calculations and estimates of the Solow'S residual for both the total GNP and the non-transactions GNP on Italian data covering the period 1951-89. The results suggest that, as regards the Italian economy, the difference between total and non-transactions productivity growth rate (effect of institutions on material production), rather than having a constant positive sign, as in the findings of Fuess and van den Berg, alternates between negative and positive sign.