France, Belgium the best countries in the world

[angus]

This is suspect.  I remember learning some time ago that Norway was huge in this regard.  You should check the source.  Something seems awfully strange here.

I notice that the site it comes from is eupedia.com.  Eupedia?  Eu is a greek prefix meaning true.  Pedia refers to children.  Eupedia is thus "true children."  Is this really something you want to trust?

[angus]

The other thing to think about is productivity as an endogenous variable, function of working hours. For instance, the longer a worker is asked to work, the lower his or her productivity; this makes sense. You have lower productivity at the end of a shift, when you are tired. This suggests that countries that have low working hours, including Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, France, and Germany, have inflated productivity. If they worked the same hours as Americans, their measured productivity would be lower. Meanwhile those that have high working hours (South Korea, Taiwan) have depressed productivity; if they cut back hours, productivity would be higher. But how much, one cannot say.

But there's another complexity, which is that in the long run, there may be an opposite effect, due to the experience factor. If you work 45 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 5 years, you have 11,250 working hours. If you work 35 hours a week, 47 weeks a year, for 5 years, you have 8,225 working hours. So those that work longer have more years of experience, and thus, have higher productivity in the long run. But I'm not aware of any studies that confirm or contradict this hypothesis.

That's all very interesting, but I still call bullshit on the OP.

Here's a table of GDP per hour worked from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011:



I found it later, after I'd posted.  Sure enough, Norway leads the pack, as I remembered. 

It may very well be that "France, Belgium the best countries in the world"  (Nevermind the GDP, can't we even afford a verb?!), but nothing in the post makes that case.  It seems that if you really wanted to make such a case, you'd go with music, film, fine wine, and epicurean delights, rather than some unsupportable argument based on maps with bunk data.

Going back to your interesting point, there may be some support for that, although your analysis is at best a gross oversimplification.  From the same BLS database, here's a chart for hours worked.  You'll notice some negative correlation between productivity per worker per hour and average annual hours worked per worker.  The correlation isn't perfect, however.  Notice that Germany has a low per capita hourly GDP, despite the fact that Germans work, on average, few hours per year than Norwegians.  There must be other factors at play here.

http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_gdp_capita_gdp_hour.htm#chart07
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[angus]

...

Well the problem with this chart here, is that this doesn't consider how much the capitalists steal from your productivity. I would guess the US capitalists are better at that, so it would probably drop down a dozen or so places if that metric was considered.

Actually, one could conceive of such a metric.  It's not quite the GINI coefficient, and that index has too many problems to be of much use anyway based on its faulty assumptions that the inflexibility of the underlying model, but you could invent one.  Actually, I'm surprised that there isn't already one out there.  Could it be that no economist has the great insight that you do?  You should publish, man.  You might net yourself a Nobel Prize in economics if you aren't careful.