This work attempts to shed light on the “information technology productivity paradox”. Employing a large data set of Italian manufacturing firms we compute ICT marginal productivity across different cluster of firms and the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on output...

The Malmquist productivity index has many attractive features. One is that it decomposes into a technical efficiency change index and a technical change index. Under constant returns to scale, its technical efficiency change index has been decomposed into a "pure" technical efficiency change...

Examines the productivity performance of the wholesale and retail trade sectors in light of their significant contribution to Australia’s record productivity performance in the 1990s. Fundamental changes in the nature and operations of wholesale trade, in particular, have brought marked...

We describe the relation between welfare growth and productivity growth. We argue that differences in productivity and productivity growth between sectors or countries are irrelevant from a policy perspective. Specialisation is based on the comparative advantages of countries. Since, by nature,...

A model of national price levels is developed to lay bare implicit assumptions behind the conventional view on the effect of productivity differentials and net foreign assets. The effect of productivity on national price levels is determined by the interaction of several countervailing channels,...

The relations between the riches of nations and the riches of Productive Knowledge (Technology) gains increasing acknowledgment among economists. Classical economists had assumed that the key to progress was the accumulation of homogenous capital goods. But, as P. Romer, among others, claims we...

This paper aims at analysing the relation between competitiveness and economic growth for the period 1995-2000 (2002 for some variables). To this aim we analyse the evolution of the unit labour cost by sector (‘traded’ and ‘non-traded’ sector) and decomposition between the unit labour...

„h This paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis of industry change designed to shed light on the adjustment processes of Australian firms, and the impact of these adjustments on firm and industry labour productivity. The analysis is based on data for 1994-95 to 1997-98 for a...

The paper examines the structure of employment defined by industry, skill, age, part-time and casual employment status and the distribution of earnings. Employment patterns, and changes in employment profiles, are examined for differences between high productivity growth industry sectors and low...

The paper provides three principal results. First, we benchmark South African infrastructure performance in terms of access, pricing, and quality against key comparator groups of countries using the most recent World Bank benchmarking data base (2005). Second, we establish clear empirical links...