Yksityisten palvelualojen kansainvälinen tuottavuusvertailu

Private services account for over a half of GDP in developed industrialised countries. We analyse how productivity in private services is measured, the challenges and problems that the measuring faces, and the direction that research is currently taking. After this we analyse the level of and growth in private services in developed industrialised countries in 1980-2003. For Finland, also the development in total factor productivity is analysed. The sectors included in the study are trade, hotels and catering, transportation, communication, finance, and business services. At the level of the economy as a whole, labour productivity in Finland is at the same level as in the reference countries on average, but productivity growth has been one of the fastest during the past twenty years. In private services, the results concerning the level of productivity in different countries depend on the method and statistical source used in the calculation. In an international comparison, the Finnish communication and finance sectors do the best. In many service sectors, productivity growth in Finland has been very good compared with the other countries