Productivity Puzzle
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A Productivity Puzzle is an economic puzzle where economic productivity is not growing as expected.
- See: GPD Growth.
References
2016
- (Varian, 2016) ⇒ Hal Varian. (2016). “Intelligent Technology.” In: Finance & Development, September 2016, Vol. 53, No. 3
- QUOTE: I have painted an optimistic picture of how technology will impact the global economy. But how will this technological progress show up in conventional economic statistics? Here the picture is somewhat mixed. Take GDP, for example. This is usually defined as the market value of all final goods and services produced in a given country in a particular time period. The catch is “market value” — if a good isn’t bought and sold, it generally doesn’t show up in GDP.
This has many implications. Household production, ad-supported content, transaction costs, quality changes, free services, and open-source software are dark matter as far as GDP is concerned, since technological progress in these areas does not show up directly in GDP.
- QUOTE: I have painted an optimistic picture of how technology will impact the global economy. But how will this technological progress show up in conventional economic statistics? Here the picture is somewhat mixed. Take GDP, for example. This is usually defined as the market value of all final goods and services produced in a given country in a particular time period. The catch is “market value” — if a good isn’t bought and sold, it generally doesn’t show up in GDP.
2014
- (Blundell et al., 2014) ⇒ Richard Blundell, Claire Crawford, and Wenchao Jin. (2014). “What Can Wages and Employment Tell Us About the UK's Productivity Puzzle?." The Economic Journal 124, no. 576
- ABSTRACT: As in many European countries, labour productivity in the UK has been stagnant since the start of the Great Recession. This article uses individual data on employment and wages to try to understand whether real wage flexibility can help shed light on the UK's productivity puzzle. It finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that workforce composition cannot explain the reduction in wages and hence productivity that we observe, even compared to previous recessions; instead, real wages have fallen significantly within jobs this time round. Why? One possibility we investigate is that the labour supply in the UK is higher compared to previous recessions.
2000
- (Klodt, 2000) ⇒ Henning Klodt. (2000). “Industrial Policy and the East German Productivity Puzzle." German Economic Review 1, no. 3
1992
- (Eakin, 1992) ⇒ Douglas Holtz-Eakin. (1992). “Public-sector Capital and the Productivity Puzzle." No. w4122 . National Bureau of Economic Research,