Latest Documents

OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2019

Low productivity jobs continue to drive employment growth

Employment is rising in OECD countries but most jobs continue to be created in relatively low-productivity, low-wage activities, says a new OECD report.

Statistical Insights: Are international productivity gaps as large as we thought?

Labour productivity is a key indicator of economic wellbeing, and raising it – producing more goods and services from the same or less work (labour input) – is one of the main drivers of sustainable economic growth.

International productivity gaps: Are labour input measures comparable?

Statistics Working Paper N. 99 2018/12 - Cross-country differences in the measurement of labour input contribute to observed productivity gaps across countries. In most countries, labour force surveys (LFS) form a primary source of information for employment related statistics, such as persons employed, employees and hours worked...

Productivity measurement, R&D assets and mark-ups in OECD countries

Statistics Working Paper N. 93 2018/6 - A key feature of the 2008 revision of the System of National Accounts was the treatment of R&D expenditure as investment. The question arises whether the standard approach towards accounting for growth contribution of assets is justified given the special nature of R&D that provides capital services by affecting the working of other inputs as a whole...

Low productivity jobs driving employment growth in many OECD countries

Weak labour productivity growth continues to mark the world’s advanced economies and risks compromising improvements in living standards, says a new OECD report.

Can potential mismeasurement of the digital economy explain the post-crisis slowdown in GDP and productivity growth?

Statistics Working Paper N. 85, 2017/9 - The digital economy has created some new measurement challenges for macroeconomic statistics and may have exacerbated some older ones, raising some concerns about the scope and estimation of GDP. Against a backdrop of slowing rates of measured productivity growth, this has raised questions about the conceptual basis of GDP and output...

Continued slowdown in productivity growth weighs down on living standards

The slowdown in productivity growth - already underway before the crisis – combined with sluggish investment, continued to undermine rises in economic output and material living standards in recent years in many of the world’s economies, according to a new report released today by the OECD.

Has the labour share declined? It depends

Statistics Working Paper N. 77, 2017/1 - We revisit the issue of how best to measure the labour and capital shares in OECD economies, distinguishing between production- and income-based perspectives. The former adopts a producer perspective with gross income as a reference: it uses a production function in a market setting.

Measuring GDP in a digitalised economy

Statistics Working Paper N. 73, 2016/7 - Recent years have seen a rapid emergence of new disruptive technologies with new forms of intermediation, service provision and consumption, with digitalisation being a common characteristic. These include new platforms that facilitate Peer-to-Peer transactions, such as AirBnB and Uber, new activities such as crowd sourcing,...