Increases in purchased services, foreign outsourcing, and investments in computers are alleged to have resulted in an understatement of input growth in manufacturing, and thus. overstatement of growth in productivity. GNP, and value-added in industries heavily engaged in these activities. Based...

We compute rates of growth in labor productivity during the 1973-80 period for samples of individual manufacturing firms, in both Japan and the U.S., and relate them to differences in the rates of growth in their capital-labor ratios and in their intensities of R&D effort. Japanese firms spent...

This paper compares and analyzes the growth of productivity in the manufacturing industries and firms in France and the U.S. based on newly assembled comparable data sets in both countries. Three explanations of the recent productivity slowdown are reviewed: shortfall in physical investment,...