In 2007 the National Accounts of the Netherlands will be expanded with a set of total factor productivity (TFP) statistics. Our main goal is to construct a system of productivity statistics at the industry branch and macro level that is, to the extent possible, consistent with National Accounts statistics. A second requirement we want to impose on our growth accounting framework is that our system should not depend on a particular school of thought about the functioning of an economy. In particular we do not adopt the neo-classical production framework. As a result TFP change is not necessarily interpreted as exclusively the result of technological change, but may also be due to scale effects, efficiency improvements and other factors. On the basis of these two principles, this report presents a tentative growth accounting framework for the Netherlands and a number of preliminary results. A range of sensitivity analyses were carried out to investigate the effects of various assumptions on productivity statistics on the industry and macro level. These assumptions refer among other things to determining a return to capital and the labour income of the self-employed. At this stage, none of the assumptions made in this paper are a final choice. Section 2 of this paper sketches the main principles of our growth accounting system. Sections 3 and 4 discuss the issue of capital and labour input measurement at current and constant prices. The other inputs of production are discussed in section 5. Sensitivity analyses are being presented in section 6. Section 7 addresses the relationship between gross output and value added based TFP change. Section 8 winds up with conclusions and indicates directions for future work.

Includes special issues.