According to Baumol's model of unbalanced growth, if resources are shifting towards industries where productivity is growing relatively slowly, the aggregate productivity growth rate will slow down. This conclusion is often applied to the advanced industrial economies, where resources are indeed...

This paper uses a new industry-level dataset to quantify the roles of structural change and information and communication technology (ICT) in explaining productivity growth in the United Kingdom, 1970-2000. The dataset is for 34 industries covering the whole economy, of which 31 industries are...

Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell have claimed that the Jorgenson form of growth accounting is conceptually flawed and severely understates the role of technological progress embodied in new capital goods ('embodiment') in explaining US growth. To the contrary, in this paper it is shown that in...

In recent work, Stacey Tevlin and Karl Whelan argue that aggregate econometric models fail to capture the US investment boom in plant and machinery in the second half of the 1990s, whereas a disaggregated approach does much better. In particular, they show that aggregate models do not capture...

The behaviour of labour productivity in the United Kingdom since the onset of the recession in early 2008 constitutes a puzzle. Over four years after the recession began labour productivity is still below its previous peak level. This paper considers the hypothesis that economic capacity can be...

This paper develops new estimates of investment in and output of information and communications technology (ICT). These new estimates imply that GDP growth has been significantly understated, particularly since 1994. A growth accounting approach is employed to measure the contribution of ICT to...

Neo-classical theory provides an integrated framework by means of which we can measure capital stocks, capital services and depreciation. In this paper the theory is set out and reviewed. It is found that the theory is quite robust and can deal with assets like computers that are subject to...

How should productivity and welfare be measured when the composition of the capital stock is shifting towards assets with shorter lives? What sort of adjustment, if any, should be made for depreciation? While GDP is still appropriate as a measure of output, in this paper it is argued that NDP...