IPM archive

Diane Coyle’s The Measure of Progress offers a thought-provoking critique of traditional economic metrics, particularly GDP and the System of National Accounts (SNA). These metrics, she argues, are inadequate for capturing the complexities of modern economies and fail to provide a satisfactory answer to the question, “Are things getting better, and for whom?”. This review article…

This article focuses on two features of the Jorgenson model of production, which is commonly used in productivity research. First, that capital stock is efficiency adjusted in that model, but hours are not. If hours are efficiency adjusted, as proposed in this article, the efficiency per hour of a much younger male college degree worker in…

This article investigates whether efficiencies defenses in merger control lead to greater economic efficiency, specifically by examining their impact on national total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Efficiencies defenses are provisions in competition law that allow efficiencies from mergers to be weighed against potential harms. While increasingly common—present in 40.4 per cent of countries by 2010—their effectiveness…

Average labour productivity (ALP) is today the productivity measure most used by policy makers, the media, and the general public. Economists recognize however that it is an inadequate measure of technological change. This is because ALP is a hybrid measure that captures both shifts in the production possibilities frontier and movements along the frontier itself. Thus,…

The 2023 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) reveals large cross-country differences in adult skill levels that carry important implications for productivity. Cross-country analysis shows a positive relationship between labour productivity and the average level of adult skills at the industry level. This reflect partly a positive link between adult skills and R&D…

Appendix to IPM-49-1 providing detailed variable definitions (TFP, labour productivity, capital intensity — extended and non-extended), country coverage (15 OECD countries, 1996-2021), sector coverage (NACE Rev. 2, manufacturing and non-manufacturing), and OECD PMR 2023 vs. simplified ETCR indicator comparisons.

Using international data on anticompetitive regulations and productivity from 15 countries and a large number of industries over 1996-2021 (EUKLEMS & INTANProd; OECD PMR database), this article models how regulations in upstream non-manufacturing sectors (energy, transport, trade, professional services) affect downstream productivity. Reforms reducing regulation in these sectors transmit to the rest of the economy through…

Issue 49 contains six articles: Cette, Lopez, Nicoletti & Vernerey on the productivity gains from procompetitive regulatory reform in Canada; Andrews, Égert & de La Maisonneuve (OECD) on adult skills and productivity using PIAAC 2023; Kohli proposing Total Labour Productivity (TLP) as an alternative to standard ALP and TFP; Shaban on whether efficiencies defenses for mergers…