Productivity Growth in the OECD Area: Some Recent Findings

32 Productivity is, once more, on the agenda in many OECD countries. It has long been regarded as the long-run driver of economic growth, but attention for productivity-related issues has waxed and waned over the past decades. In recent years, productivity growth has received a great deal of attention in several OECD countries, notably Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Recently, the growing focus on productivity has also affected work at the OECD. The organization was asked in 1999 by its member countries to examine the variation in growth (and productivity) performance in the OECD area, analyse its causes and provide guidance for policy making. The strong performance of the United States at the time and related claims about a “new economy” were among the reasons for this demand, as was the poor performance of several other OECD countries. A final report was presented to the OECD Ministerial meeting in May 2001 and was released in August 2001 (OECD, 2001a). This article briefly summarizes some of the findings of OECD work on productivity; it also points to some work that is ongoing. The article first discusses recent trends in economic and productivity growth in the OECD area, and examines some of the main driving factors of differences in economic growth. Next, it focuses in more detail on the pick-up in multi-factor productivity growth in some OECD countries and explores why this may have increased in some countries over the recent period. A final section briefly examines the role of structural change in productivity growth. The article also touches briefly on some of the methodological work on productivity measurement that is underway at the OECD (Schreyer, 2001a).