{"title":"Pro-Productivity Institutions: Learning from National Experience","authors":"A. Renda, Shaun Dougherty","doi":"10.1787/D1615666-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/D1615666-EN","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses and compares ten institutions that have a mandate to promote productivity-enhancing reforms. The selected bodies include government advisory councils, standing inquiry bodies, and ad hoc, temporary task forces. We find that well-designed pro-productivity institutions can generally improve the quality of the policy process and political debate, and can make a significant contribution to evidence-based policymaking. Our findings also support the view that concentrating knowledge and research on productivity in one independent, highly skilled and reputed body can help create the momentum and the knowledge that are required to embrace the challenging task of promoting long-term productivity growth. We also find evidence that while institutions located outside government have more leeway in promoting reforms that challenge vested interests and produce results over a time span that goes beyond the electoral cycle, the existence of smart government bodies can allow experimental policymaking and a more adaptive, evidence-based policy process. We also find that it is of utmost importance to provide these bodies with sufficient resources, skills, transparency and procedural accountability to fulfil their tasks; a sufficiently broad mission, oriented towards long-term well-being and at both supply-side and demand-side considerations; policy evaluation functions; and the ability to reach out to the general public in a variety of ways, from consultation to advocacy, use of social media, and other forms of communication.","PeriodicalId":14341,"journal":{"name":"International Productivity Monitor","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44936997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ICT Prices and ICT Services: What do they tell us about Productivity and Technology?","authors":"David M. Byrne, C. Corrado","doi":"10.17016/FEDS.2017.015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2017.015","url":null,"abstract":"This article reassesses the link between ICT prices, technology, and productivity. To understand how the ICT sector could come to the rescue of a whole economy, a multi-sector model developed by Oulton (2012) is extended to include ICT services and used to calibrate the steady-state contribution of the ICT sector to growth in aggregate U.S. labour productivity. The extended model also has implications for the relationship between prices for ICT services and prices for the ICT assets used to supply them, namely, that, ICT service prices may diverge from ICT asset prices and reflect productivity gains from ICT asset management by the sector. All told, because ICT technologies increasingly diffuse through the economy via purchased services (e.g. cloud services, data analytic services), they are not fully accounted for in the standard narrative of ICT’s contribution to economic growth. When this omission is corrected and the price indexes for ICT assets developed in Byrne and Corrado (2017a) are used to indicate the relative productivity of the ICT sector, its contribution to potential labour productivity growth is estimated to be substantially larger than generally thought — 1.4 percentage points per year.","PeriodicalId":14341,"journal":{"name":"International Productivity Monitor","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41585677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review Article on The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective by Angus Maddison","authors":"A. Sharpe","doi":"10.1080/15357449.2002.11069142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15357449.2002.11069142","url":null,"abstract":"This is a review article by Andrew Sharpe from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards of Angus Maddison's path-breaking new book, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. The article summarizes Maddison's key findings in a number of areas, with particular emphasis on his estimates of population, real GDP, and real GDP per capita for very long periods, going back to 0 AD for all regions, to 1000 for most major countries, and to 1950 for literally all countries of the world. The article concludes that the book will be required reading for all economists interested in long-run economic growth trends and that Maddison's estimates, while by no means definitive, will stimulate debate for years to come.","PeriodicalId":14341,"journal":{"name":"International Productivity Monitor","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59912229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editor's Overview","authors":"A. Sharpe","doi":"10.1353/cwh.2016.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh.2016.0003","url":null,"abstract":"The 31st issue of the International Productivity Monitor contains articles on the following topics:the productivity paradox in the New Digital Economy; the industry origins of Canada's weaker productivity growth; the factors behind the gap between productivity and median wage growth in Canada; a review of Robert J. Gordon's new book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, with a response by the author; and a symposium on issues related to total factor productivity growth, including its sources, industry decompositions, and relationship to partial productivity measures.","PeriodicalId":14341,"journal":{"name":"International Productivity Monitor","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/cwh.2016.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67014523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}