The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has in recent years devoted considerable resources to the study of productivity trends in the OECD area. In this article, Dirk Pilat, a senior economist at the OECD provides an overview of the key results of this research effort. These include the finding that: the United States continues to have the highest level of GDP per capita in the OECD area; the gap between the aggregate productivity level in the United States and in other OECD countries increased in the 1990s after falling up to then, reflecting the rebound in U.S. productivity growth, a phenomenon not observed elsewhere; divergences in productivity growth performance are not due to different measurement techniques used in OECD countries; and difference in GDP per capita trends reflect differences in labour utilization, with the United States enjoying strong growth in both productivity and the employment rate while many European countries experiencing limited employment growth.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Capital and Total Factor Productivity; Capacity E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Capital; Investment; Capacity J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production O14 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology O47 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Measurement of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence O57 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
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