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...

This paper surveys the experience of economic growth in the 20th century with a focus on technological change at the frontier together with issues related to success and failure in catch-up growth.  A detailed account of growth performance based on historical national accounts data is given and...

In this paper we present an international comparison of growth trends in the OECD countries, with a special attention to developments in labour productivity - allowing for human capital accumulation – and multifactor productivity (MFP) - allowing for changes in the composition of fixed...

This paper discusses links between policy settings, institutions and economic growth in OECD countries on the basis of cross-country time-series regressions. The econometric approach allows short-term adjustments and convergence speeds to vary across countries, imposing restrictions only on the...

This paper discusses growth performance in the OECD countries over the past two decades. Special attention is given to developments in labour productivity, allowing for human capital accumulation, and multifactor productivity (MFP), allowing for changes in the composition and quality of physical...

The purpose of this article is to study the trends in per capita productivity in several major industrialised countries. The analysis is first based on annual data over a long period spanning the entire 20th century for the United States, France and the United Kingdom. Productivity trends are...

This article is based on a study by Bart van Ark, Robert Inklaar and Robert H. McGuckin (2002a), "Changing Gear: Productivity, ICT and Service: Europe and the United States," Research Memorandum GD60, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (downloadable from http://www.eco.rug.nl/ggdc).

In this paper we analyse labour productivity growth in 51 industries in European countries and the United States. Using shift-share techniques 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 two traditions of optimism in economics. In one of these traditions optimism is based on the comprehension of a spontaneous (and often progressive) order in a decentralised (or market) economy – what I will call the optimism of the “invisible hand”. Against the optimism...

Business cycles and growth cycles should not be mixed or confused, as is unfortunately often the case in discussions of economic growth. This paper compares various approaches to time series decomposition for the analysis of business cycles and growth cycles as related but separate phenomena. We...