In this paper we analyse labour productivity growth in 51 industries in European countries and the United States. Using shift-share techinques we identify the industries in which the U.S. is leading most strongly. With a detailed decomposition analysis we identify whether the sources of the U.S....

This paper explores the quantitative plausibility of three candidate explanations for the European productivity slowdown with respect to the US. The empirical plausibility of the common wisdom on the topic (the IT usageʺ hypothesis) is found to crucially depend on how IT-using industries are...