Output Measurement in the Service Sectors: Volume 56 (National Bureau of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth) - Hardcover

Griliches

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226308855 ISBN 13: 9780226308852

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1992

Synopsis

Is the fall in overall productivity growth in the United States and other developed countries related to the rising share of the service sectors in the economy? Since services represent well over half of the U.S. gross national product, it is also important to ask whether these sectors have had a slow rate of growth, as this would act as a major drag on the productivity growth of the overall economy and on its competitive performance. In this timely volume, leading experts from government and academia argue that faulty statistics have prevented a clear understanding of these issues.

About this title

About the Author

Zvi Griliches is the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University and director of the Productivity and Technical Change program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is past president of the Econometric Society and of the American Economic Association and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

From the Back Cover

Is the fall in overall productivity growth in the United States and other developed countries related to the rising share of the service sectors in the economy? Since services represent well over half of the U.S. gross national product, it is also important to ask whether these sectors have had a slow rate of growth, as this would act as a major drag on the productivity growth of the overall economy and on its competitive performance. In this timely volume, leading experts from government and academia argue that faulty statistics have prevented a clear understanding of these issues. The contributors suggest that current measurement methodology may be underestimating the contribution of services to productivity growth in the economy as a whole. If government statistics understate output, then they also overstate price increases and misrepresent productivity growth. Such mismeasurement would distort our views of how fast incomes are growing and how high inflation is. When it comes to measuring output in services, it is not exactly clear what is being transacted, what the output is, and what precisely is covered by payment for a given service. Moreover, "service sectors" is ambiguous. For example, services are defined as whatever is nontangible and not a commodity, yet electricity, a tangible item, is considered a service, and gas, while regarded as a commodity if bottled, is a service when it comes from a pipe. Government economists from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics offer a detailed evaluation of the present methods and theory underlying service sector statistics, including the consumer price index and labor productivity indexes. Other contributorsdiscuss wholesale and retail trade, the stock market, banking, education, day care, and transportation. The volume provides an international perspective with studies of France and Sweden, among other countries. The best currently available overview of present measurement practices and their short-comings, this volume also suggests possible solutions to the problems of calculating service sector statistics. It will be valuable reading for government economists concerned with these issues, as well as academic and business economists who study output, productivity growth, and inflation.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226308855
• ISBN 13: 9780226308852
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 572