Caves, Christensen, Diewert introduced Malmquist output, input and productivity indexes into production theory in a systematic way. These indexes use distance functions to represent the technology. In recent years, there have been many attempts to decompose Malmquist productivity indexes into...

Using new data from Statistics Canada, the paper shows that the productivity performance of the business sector of the Canadian economy has been reasonably satisfactory over the past 46 years. In particular, traditional gross income Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth averaged 1.14 percentage...

This paper provides a brief introduction to a proposed new opportunity cost treatment of owner occupied housing in measures of inflation for the United States. In addition, the paper introduces, and provides links to, a collection of nine other papers that discuss various aspects of the...

Van Veelen and van der Weide (2008) in a recent paper provided some interesting new perspectives on the index number problem. However, the present paper argues that their definitions of a true index and an exact index are different from the standard definitions in the literature. The differences...

The paper reviews some of the measurement problems that are associated with measuring sectoral Total Factor Productivity growth rates. The paper notes that the production accounts in the present System of National Accounts (SNA) need to be extended somewhat in order to be suitable as a data base...

Statistical agencies in different nations usually use the rental equivalence approach to the treatment of housing in their CPIs but a few countries use the user cost approach. The paper argues that an opportunity cost approach is the correct theoretical framework for accounting for OOH in a CPI....

The paper reviews and extends the theory of exact and superlative index numbers. Exact index numbers are empirical index number formula that are equal to an underlying theoretical index, provided that the consumer has preferences that can be represented by certain functional forms. These exact...

Tang and Wang provided a decomposition of economy wide labour productivity into sectoral contribution effects. The present note reworks their methodology to provide a more transparent and simple decomposition. This new decomposition is then related to another decomposition due to Gini and...

The next international version of the System of National Accounts will recommend that R&D (Research and Development) expenditures be capitalized instead of being immediately expensed as in the present System of National Accounts 1993. An R&D project creates a new technology, which in principle...

The paper develops an extension of a one period model of production involving beginning and end of the period capital stocks along with output and input flows that is due to Hicks and Edwards and Bell. This generalized Austrian model of production takes into account that end of the period...