Productivity growth and technological change in Europe and the U.S.

This paper presents an evaluation on the technological sources of labor productivity growth across European countries and the US economy for the period 1980-2004. Assets of capital are divided into those related to the information and communication technologies (ICT), and non-ICT assets. Technological progress is divided into neutral change and investment specific change. Previous exercises have aimed at ICT as a serious contributor to the upsurge of US productivity from 1995 on. Contribution to productivity growth from each type of technological progress for the US and EU-15 countries is computed using two different approaches: a growth accounting and a general equilibrium. The US and Denmark are the countries with the larger contribution from ICT-technological progress. Overall, we find that Europe is well behind the US in terms of the effects of ICT technological change.