Understanding Productivity

Reviews / Votes

"This volume provides a timely and authoritative guide to the complex debates surrounding the global productivity slowdown. Bringing together leading international experts, it explains why productivity matters for living standards and economic policy and offers readers an accessible overview of the key concepts, measurement challenges and competing interpretations shaping today's productivity discourse and the future outlook." Bart van Ark, Director, The Productivity Institute, University of Manchester, UK

"The persistent and puzzling global slowdown in productivity growth globally since the mid-2000s has contributed to political instability, rising inequality and geopolitical frictions. Understanding Productivity investigates the phenomenon through a mix of mainstream and institutional perspectives, covering topics ranging from innovation and financialization to the environmental crisis. The book will be of interest to policymakers and students alike, providing a guide to this engine of economic performance." Dame Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge, UK.

"Productivity is critical to economic performance, but its meaning and measurement must evolve as our economies undergo structural change and face new challenges such as the climate transition. This volume provides a compendium of thoughtful, state-of-the-art essays." Dani Rodrik, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA.

"Understanding productivity is an essential first step to improving economic growth. This book makes a major contribution to examining the many aspects of productivity and identifying policies which may enhance productivity while addressing climate and other imperatives." Ian Goldin, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change, University of Oxford, UK.

"Industrial innovation has led to productivity gains which have increased growth and raised income per head. This cycle of progress is absent in the present-day transformation in the way goods and services are produced using digital technologies, and it is important to understand why this and what can be done about it. That is why this book is so valuable as it explores the nature of productivity and the reasons for its decline, crucial matters of interest for all those concerned with economic and social progress." Mark Dodgson, Emeritus Professor, University of Queensland, Australia.

A major enigma in economics today concerns the measurement and determinants of productivity growth. As technology becomes ever more sophisticated, paradoxically the rate of productivity growth, in especially the developed countries, exhibits a tendency to decline. The important question is why? This collection of essays by leading authorities in their respective fields, provides comprehensive assessments of the various reasons. The essays cover a wide variety of issues affecting productivity growth. They develop existing theories, but also discuss new, as well as important but neglected, insights. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wishes clear, concise and authoritative discussions of one of the most important economic questions now affecting the developed economies.
John McCombie, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge, UK.