A recent explanation for declining GDP growth is that R&D has gotten harder. The formal explanation in Jones (1995) is “fishing out”-- idea discovery decreases in the level of knowledge. If valid, long-run growth is exogenous. In follow-on empirical work, Bloom, Jones, Van Reenen and Webb...

The movement of workers from the farm sector to a more productive nonfarm sector has failed to generate significant gains in labor productivity in recent decades in many developing countries. This paper offers a new perspective into the barriers to growth-enhancing structural transformation,...

In Germany, the productivity of professional services, a sector dominated by micro and small firms, declined by 40 percent between 1995 and 2014. This productivity decline also holds true for professional services in other European countries. Using a German firm-level dataset of 700,000...

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 a recent paper, Bloom et al. (2020) find evidence for a substantial decline in research productivity in the U.S. economy during the last 40 years. In this paper, we replicate their findings for China and Germany, using detailed firm-level data spanning three decades. Our results indicate that...

In Germany, the productivity of professional services, a sector dominated by micro and small firms, declined by 40 percent between 1995 and 2014. This productivity decline also holds true for professional services in other European countries. Using a German firm-level dataset of 700,000...

We ask whether a weaker contribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) to productivity growth could account for the productivity slowdown observed in Canada since the early 2000s. To answer this question, we consider several methods capturing channels through which ICT could...

When the SMEs’ competitive advantage is based on intangible assets, the SMEs’ economic activity depends greatly on the innovation capabilities of the recipients of the knowledge because knowledge tends to be developed in the actual contexts. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact...

In this study, we examine the determinants of productivity growth and labour produc - tivity in Switzerland based on publicly available sources (OECD and the Swiss Federal Statistical Office) and on micro data from the KOF innovation panel. Special attention is paid to a firm’s innovation...

This paper employs the industry of origin approach to compare value added and productivity of Singapore and Hong Kong's Distribution Trade Sector for the period 2001-2008. The direct comparison between these two economies was motivated by the statements of the Singapore government: Its services...