In his 1966 Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge, entitled On the Causes of the Slow Rate of Economic Growth in the UK, the Hungarian-born British economist, Nicholas Kaldor presented a series of "laws" to account for the growth rate differences between Britain on the one hand, and the more successful...

In his 1966 Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge, entitled On the Causes of the Slow Rate of Economic Growth in the UK, the Hungarian-born British economist, Nicholas Kaldor presented a series of "laws" to account for the growth rate differences between Britain on the one hand, and the more successful...

This paper compares productivity developments across industrial countries based on official OECD data in the business sector. It discusses the uncertainties surrounding the measurement of both productivity levels and productivity growth, and then focuses on changes in productivity growth. The...

Average hourly productivity has often been used to draw conclusions on long run per capita GDP growth, based on the assumption of full utilization of labour resources. In this paper, we argue that a failure to recognize the potentially significant wedges among the two variables – even in the...

The release of ESA 1995 GDP data for Malta has ushered in great changes in the way in which the Maltese economy can be analysed. Indicators computed from the new national accounts reveal that the Maltese economy has achieved a relatively high degree of convergence with the European average,...

Euro area countries exhibited modest convergence prior to the financial crisis and diverged thereafter. Such divergence has been examined from many angles, and various narratives of the crisis have developed. Surprisingly, the gradual transformation of the economic structures of euro area...

This paper describes recent trends in productivity growth in the EU and the US. By adopting a sectoral perspective, we achieve a deeper understanding of the compositional patterns of aggregate growth and shed light on the reasons why the EU productivity has lagged behind the US during the period...

Innovation is widely considered as the main determinant of long-term economic growth. Despite this consensus, it is arduous to measure its economic effect at the firm and aggregate level. The objective of the present paper is to propose a critical examination of innovation indicators and...

A quarter-century after reunification, labor productivity in eastern Germany continues to lag systematically behind the West. Denison-Hall-Jones point-in-time estimates point to large gaps in total factor productivity as the proximate cause, and auxiliary measurements which do not rely on...