Productivity Stats get a Nudge

Nov 13, 2015

Brian Fallow has an in-depth column explaining recent research into firm productivity in the NZ Herald.

"A more cheerful picture of productivity growth than the official statistics give us emerges from new research into what has been happening at the level of individual firms.

Economists at the Wellington think tank Motu, David Maré and Dean Hyslop, together with independent researcher Richard Fabling, have figured out how to quality-adjust the labour input that goes into the calculation of productivity.

It turns out that in the period they looked at, from 2001 to 2012, average skill levels fell by some 1.8 per cent." more...