CSLS International Conference on Service Sector Productivity and the Productivity Paradox

The second stage of a major CSLS project on service sector productivity and the productivity paradox, coordinated by Erwin Diewert (UBC), Alice Nakamura (University of Alberta) and Andrew Sharpe (CSLS), involving a network of over forty researchers in nine countries. In recent years the information technology revolution had transformed the service sector, yet productivity growth in many service industries was weak or even negative. The conference addressed two questions: whether official data for service industries truly capture changes in real output and hence productivity, and — if the data do reflect reality — why the information revolution was having no apparent payoff in productivity growth. Seven sessions covered conceptual and measurement frameworks, service sector productivity measurement, innovation in the service sector, insurance, banking, public sector productivity, and explanations of the productivity paradox, with luncheon addresses by Zvi Griliches and Dale Jorgenson and a closing panel. The project’s third stage was the April 1999 special issue of the Canadian Journal of Economics (see JS-03).