Canadian Journal of Economics – Special Issue on Service Sector Productivity and the Productivity Paradox

In 1996 the Centre for the Study of Living Standards initiated an international research project on service sector productivity and the productivity paradox, bringing together leading economists from eight countries to shed light on two related issues: the measurement of service sector productivity, and the paradox that lagging productivity growth has occurred despite revolutionary advances in information technology. This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Economics represents the outcome of that project and contains revised versions of papers presented at the CSLS conference held in Ottawa on April 11-12, 1997. The papers are organised in four parts: what the productivity paradox is; computer-related measurement problems; whether new goods and new retail practices lie at its heart; and other service sector measurement problems including insurance, banking and international comparisons. The papers confirm that real measurement problems have distorted official productivity measures, but that these distortions cannot account for the post-1973 productivity slowdown.