The OECD Productivity Manual: A Guide to the Measurement of Industry-Level and Aggregate Productivity

The measurement of productivity is a complex task. The OECD has recently released a comprehensive manual or guide to the measurement of industry-level and aggregate productivity. In the fifth article, Paul Schreyer from the OECD and the author of the OECD productivity manual provides an overview of the manual. He highlights a number of the key issues addressed in the manual, including: the choice of gross output versus value added productivity measures; the need for independence of output from input measures; the importance of adjusting for quality change in existing goods and accounting for new goods in price indices; methods of capturing the skill composition of labour; measurement of capital input; and the interpretation of productivity measures. In terms of the research and development agenda for productivity statistics, Schreyer identifies four priorities: better price indices for output measures by industry, particularly for high technology industries and difficult-to-measure services industries; better data on hours worked by industry; improvement in the quality of data on capital input; and improved input-output tables.