Productivity varies widely between industries and countries, but even more so across individual firms within the same sectors. The challenge for governments is to strike the right balance between policies designed to increase overall productivity and policies designed to promote the reallocation of resources towards firms that could use them more effectively. The aim of this book is to provide the empirical evidence necessary in order to strike this policy balance. The authors do so by using a micro-aggregated dataset for 20 EU economies produced by CompNet, the Competitiveness Research Network, established some 10 years ago among major European institutions and a number of EU productivity boards, National Central Banks, National Statistical institutes, as well as academic Institutions. They call for pan-EU initiatives involving statistical offices and scholars to achieve a truly complete EU market for firm-level information on which to build solidly founded economic policies.

This book develops the theory of productivity measurement using the empirical index number approach. The theory uses multiplicative indices and additive indicators as measurement tools, instead of relying on the usual neo-classical assumptions, such as the existence of a production function characterized by constant returns to scale, optimizing behavior of the economic agents, and perfect foresight. The theory can be applied to all the common levels of aggregation (micro, meso, and macro), and half of the book is devoted to accounting for the links existing between the various levels. Basic insights from National Accounts are thereby used. The final chapter is devoted to the decomposition of productivity change into the contributions of efficiency change, technological change, scale effects, and input or output mix effects. Applications on real-life data demonstrate the empirical feasibility of the theory. The book is directed to a variety of overlapping audiences: statisticians involved in measuring productivity change; economists interested in growth accounting; researchers relating macro-economic productivity change to its industrial sources; enterprise micro-data researchers; and business analysts interested in performance measurement.

The productivity of a business exerts an important influence on its financial performance. A similar influence exists for industries and economies: those with superior productivity performance thrive at the expense of others. Productivity performance helps explain the growth and demise of businesses and the relative prosperity of nations. Productivity Accounting: The Economics of Business Performance offers an in-depth analysis of variation in business performance, providing the reader with an analytical framework within which to account for this variation and its causes and consequences. The primary focus is the individual business, and the principal consequence of business productivity performance is business financial performance. Alternative measures of financial performance are considered, including profit, profitability, cost, unit cost, and return on assets. Combining analytical rigor with empirical illustrations, the analysis draws on wide-ranging literatures, both historical and current, from business and economics, and explains how businesses create value and distribute it.

The productivity growth rate decline has jeopardized our standard of living and contributed to many of the countries economic ills. It has damaged U.S. industries' competitive position in the world and domestic markets. It isn't the 'United States' which is experiencing comparatively low rates of productivity growth; rather it is the individual firms which in aggregation make up the economy. The purpose of this study was to analyze those companies which are measuring their productivity to determine how they are coping with the concepts of productivity and its measurement problems. A survey instrument was developed based upon a review of the literature relating to productivity and its measurement and by attending an American Productivity Center seminar. Eighty-five of the Fortune 500 companies returning the questionnaire measure their productivity. These returns formed the basis for the study's analysis. These companies use their productivity measures for a multiplicity of purposes. Some of the many uses reported included increasing awareness among employees, assisting in long and short range planning and for operational purposes. To meet their diverse needs the firms have developed many measures of productivity. Nearly all use several different measures of labor productivity. Nearly two-thirds use sales to represent output, while over three-quarters use some other value to represent output. It is evident that many firms use more than one value for output. All firms measuring labor productivity included hourly employees, however a decreasing number included salary, supervisory, management, engineering or R & D personnel. Among the firms measuring capital productivity all included equipment and machinery among their capital inputs, nearly all included land and building but the firms including inventories, account receivables, leased fixed assets or cash declined steadily ...

Presents the proceedings of two workshops on productivity measurement and analysis, which brought together representatives of statistical offices, central banks and other officials involved with the analysis and measurement of productivity at aggregate and industry levels.