Comparing Labour Productivity Growth in the OECD Area: The Role of Measurement

This paper examines how measurement problems affect international comparisons of labour productivity. It suggests that these measurement problems do not significantly affect the assessment of aggregate productivity patterns in the OECD area. However, these problems do influence the more detailed assessment of productivity growth, notably the role of specific sectors and demand components in aggregate performance. The paper shows that there are only a few significant problems regarding the comparability of nominal GDP across OECD countries, the most important being the treatment of software investment. In most cases, efforts are underway to reduce the size of these differences. Measurement differences for real GDP are also important, although several of these factors have impacts that work in different directions. Moreover, several of these problems primarily affect the distribution of total GDP across different expenditure categories and across different activities, not necessarily ... Comparaisons de la croissance de la productivite de la main-d'œuvre au niveau de la zone de l'OCDE : L'importance des questions de mesure Le present document examine en quoi les problemes de mesure affectent les comparaisons internationales de la productivite de la main-d’œuvre. Il montre que ces problemes n’ont pas de repercussions notables sur l’evaluation du profil general d’evolution de la productivite dans la zone de l’OCDE. Par contre, ils ont une influence des lors qu’on veut pousser plus avant l’analyse de la croissance de la productivite, notamment determiner la part qui est imputable a un secteur particulier ou a telle ou telle composante de la demande. Les auteurs observent que la comparabilite entre pays de l’OCDE des donnees sur le PIB nominal souleve peu de problemes importants et que le principal de ces derniers est lie au traitement des investissements en logiciels. Dans la plupart des cas, des efforts sont deployes pour reduire l’ampleur de ces divergences. Les disparites au niveau de la mesure du PIB reel sont egalement importantes, meme si elles ne jouent pas toutes dans la meme direction. Qui plus ...

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