The performance of the U.S. economy over the past several years has been remarkable, including a rebound in labor productivity growth after nearly a quarter century of sluggish gains. To assess the role of information technology in the recent rebound, this paper re-examines the growth...

Structural change is an important driver of productivity growth at the aggregate level. While previous productivity decompositions account for the contributions of market entry and exit, they overlook continuing firms that switch from one industry to another. We develop an improved productivity...

Traditional index number theory decomposes a value ratio into the product of a price index times a quantity index. Growth accounting is based on this traditional approach to index number theory. This paper takes an alternative approach which decomposes a value difference into the sum of a price...

This article surveys arguments on the lack of innovative capacity of the Dutch economy as presented by Kleinknecht in several papers. The arguments are critically discussed and in addition an alternative way to calculate productivity figures is presented. The authors conclude that the hypothesis...

This paper presents the results of long run labour productivity and GDP growth rate projections (until 2050) for each of the 25 EU Member States and provides a detailed overview of the forecast methodology used. These projections were undertaken in order to provide an internationally comparable...

In this chapter, Andrew Sharpe provides a comprehensive non-technical introduction to the productivity issue, including discussion of productivity concepts, measurement issues, trends and prospects. He begins by noting that productivity is the relationship between the output of goods and...

The objective of this report is to provide an overview of the evolution of productivity in the natural resources industries in Canada over the last 40 years. This report presents data and discusses trends in labour and total factor productivity for natural resources industries in Canada over the...

After accelerating in the second half of the 1990s, aggregate labour productivity growth in Canada has fallen off significantly since 2000. This paper examines the factors behind this development, which is puzzling given the recent acceleration of productivity growth in the United States and the...

Major European countries, unlike the United States, did not experience an acceleration in labour productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s. In this article, Gilbert Cette from the Bank of France and the University of Aix-Marseilles II, Jacques Mairesse of INSEE-CREST, and Yusef Kocoglu...

Puzzles intrigue and motivate researchers and focus research effort, and the productivity area is fortunate in having many unresolved issues. In the second article, Andrew Sharpe of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards puts forward and briefly discusses what he sees as the ten most...