Labour Productivity Levels in OECD Countries

This paper provides estimates of labour productivity levels in OECD manufacturing, for 9 countries and 36 industrial sectors. It also provides an overview of some of the available evidence on cross-country productivity differences in the service sector. The paper uses industry-specific conversion factors to calculate productivity levels, based on available industry-of-origin studies and material from the expenditure approach to international comparisons. After a discussion of some methodological issues, the paper describes the estimation of manufacturing productivity levels in detail, while also referring to some other recent work on the issue. The variation in cross-country productivity levels appears to be quite large in the OECD area, suggesting that there may be scope for further productivity catch-up in many countries and many sectors ...