Information Technology And Labour Productivity Growth

The remarkable behavior of information technology prices provides the key to the resurgence of productivity growth in the USA and the world economy. This title presents the contemporary framework for productivity measurement that focuses on the impact of information technology on economic growth.

Technology, Growth, and the Labor Market brings together research by economists from academia and the Federal Reserve System. The first section of the volume includes discussions by monetary policymakers with firsthand experience in determining how technology affects productivity, inequality, and macroeconomic growth. Papers in the second section discuss the sources of the surge in labor productivity growth during the latter half of the 1990s and present forecasts of labor productivity growth rates during the next few years. In the third section, the papers focus on the role of technological advances in changes in earnings inequality in the labor market. The authors examine whether inequality should be viewed as a causal result of skill-biased technological change or whether there is a missing link - or perhaps no link - between changes in technology and changes in wage inequality. The final section explores the relationships between computer investment, worker skills, human resource practices, and productivity at the industry and firm levels.

The 32nd issue of the International Productivity Monitor is a special issue produced in collaboration with the OECD. All articles published in this issue were selected from papers presented at the First Annual Conference of the OECD Global Forum on Productivity held in Lisbon, Portugal, July ...

This volume focuses on the Information and Communication (ICT) revolution and its impact on economic growth. Even though the emergence of the knowledge economy is at the center of attention by media and is often a subject of economic policy debate, economic research on the issue is still relatively underdeveloped and many aspects of it are still awaiting proper theoretical and empirical scrutiny. One important question is whether, as many economists and opinion leaders maintain the knowledge economy and the new information technologies have fostered the birth of a 'new economy' which by inducing a strong productivity growth in most sectors, is behind the impressive growth of GDP experienced by the US economy. Empirical research has in fact been unable to provide a conclusive answer to this question. This book debates this issue and provides the opportunity to discuss the economic and social effects of the ICT revolution. It also focuses on the functioning and the micro-economic structure of the ICT sector, as well as on its impact on various industries, on the financial system and on the labor market. It analyses the role of the ICT revolution on regional development and it addresses important policy issues such as its consequences for antitrust legislation and government regulation.

What is driving recent growth in OECD countries? This study shows that success requires not some silver bullet, but a range of complementary factors that support the innovation-intensive growth exemplified by new information and communication technologies like the Internet and Internet applications.

Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth presents a selection of recent research advances on long term economic growth. While the contributions stem from both economic history, macro- and microeconomics and the economics of innovation, all papers depart from a common viewpoint: the key factor behind long term growth is productivity, and the latter is primarily driven by technological change. Most contributions show implicitly or explicitly that technological change is at least partly dependent on growth itself. Furthermore, technology appears to interact strongly with investment in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical, political and institutional settings. Together these papers are an up-to-date account of the remarkable convergence in theoretical and empirical work on productivity and growth over the past decades. The first part deals with the characteristics of growth regimes over longer periods, ranging from 20 years to two centuries. The next four chapters study the determinants of productivity growth and, in some cases, productivity slowdown during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The final five chapters focus on the role of technology and innovation as the key determinants of growth. Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth is, therefore, a welcome collection for academic scholars and graduate students in economics, history and related social sciences as well as for policy makers.