Dirk Pilat and Paul Schreyer of the OECD discuss the new OECD Productivity Database. The database covers 26 OECD countries for labour productivity estimates, as well as 14 countries for multifactor productivity estimates. While the database represents the most comparable productivity estimates...

This article by Edward N. Wolff of New York University examines trends in convergence in OECD countries toward U.S. productivity levels during the postwar period and finds strong evidence for this phenomenon up to 1990, with rapid growth in investment, education, and R&D in OECD countries...

The measurement of productivity is a complex task. The OECD has recently released a comprehensive manual or guide to the measurement of industry-level and aggregate productivity. In the fifth article, Paul Schreyer from the OECD and the author of the OECD productivity manual provides an overview...

Innovation is widely recognized as a key ingredient of productivity success. This article by Someshwar Rao, Ashfaq Ahmad, William Horsman, and Phaedra Kaptein-Russell of Industry Canada provides support for this view by finding a strong positive relationship between measures of fundamental...

International comparisons of living standards are still primarily made using GDP per capita, in spite of recurrent criticism that this is a partial and ill-founded measure of social welfare (Sen). Alternative measures abound, such as the Index of Human Development computed by the United Nations...

The third issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains six articles that deal with a wide range of issues in the productivity area. Topics covered are the contribution of the information and communications technology sector to...

This the inaugural issue of the International Productivity Monitor, a new publication produced by the Ottawa-based Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS). The objective of the Monitor is to focus atttention on the importance of productivity for improving living standards and quality of...

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has in recent years devoted considerable resources to the study of productivity trends in the OECD area. In this article, Dirk Pilat, a senior economist at the OECD provides an overview of the key results of this research effort....