A Comparative Analysis of Productivity Measurements for Five European Countries

The last century provided the stage for important changes in the productivity of all industries. The Industrial Revolution together with the several technological revolutions enhanced the growth rhythm of economies by introducing new and improved production means. This article analyses several indicators of productivity for five European countries, during the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21st century. The research is based on statistical data provided by EU KLEMS, OECD and The New Maddison Project and the reviewed period is 1970-2007. The countries that have been the focus of our research are Finland, France, Germany, Greece and Spain. The choice of countries is justified by the need to approach both countries that are well known for their productivity enhancing methods and countries that have entered the race at a later stage. Another reason motivating our selection is the fact that we wanted to include countries from Northern, Central and Southern Europe. The research is based on input-output indexes used to emphasise the productivity of labour and capital and its evolution over the time. The basic research question of the present paper is whether there are largely different methods for computing productivity or we can consider the existence of a single theoretical concept measured in many ways. Subsequently, we wanted to verify whether these measurements reflect different underlying realities or if they are just different representations of the same process