Most analyses of international differences in productivity growth present data for OECD countries only. Although defendable from a data-quality point of view, this implies that some important industrial countries that have grown fast in recent years are excluded from the analysis. To avoid this outcome the present study includes the most important NICs as well. Various indicators of economic and technological development and trends for the countries included in the analysis are presented. It is shown that although some convergence takes place, there are diverging factors at work as well. The formal model discussed above is then estimated on pooled time-series cross-country data for the period 1960-1985, and the consequences for analyses of international productivity differences and the slow-down in productivity growth in the 1970s are discussed.
