Paul Schreyer

High-Growth Firms and Employment

This STI Working Paper deals with this group of rapidly expanding firms. It does so by placing the discussion into a context of entrepreneurship, arguing that there are two main aspects to this notion: one of business start-ups and market entry, and another one of innovation. Evidence is based on results from five OECD countries (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden) as well as from Quebec (Canada). Each of these studies used a firm-level data set to identify high-growth firms and their differentiating characteristics. High-growth firms are those firms that rank first according to a measure that combines relative (percentage) and absolute rates of employment expansion. Despite considerable differences in the underlying data and some of the methodologies, number of common findings emerge: High-growth firms account for a disproportionately large part of gross jobs gained. Small firms exhibit higher net job creation rates than large firms do. At the same time, significant flows ...

The Contribution of Information and Communication Technology to Output Growth

This paper deals with the contribution of information and communication technology (ICT) to economic growth and to labour and multi-factor productivity. It uses a well-established growth accounting framework to assess the role of ICTs as capital inputs and the contribution of these capital inputs to output growth. The paper provides an international perspective by presenting results for the G7 countries. For this purpose, data on ICT investment expenditure were compiled from several sources, to construct measures of ICT capital stocks and capital services. Special care was taken to account for the methodological differences in price deflators for computers as they exist across OECD countries. For all seven countries, the report finds that ICT capital goods have been important contributors to economic growth, although the role of ICT has been most accentuated in the United States. An important limitation of the study lies in the timeliness of internationally comparable data. ... Cette etude examine la contribution des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) a la croissance economique, ainsi qu’a la productivite du travail et a la productivite totale des facteurs. Elle s’appuie sur un cadre eprouve d’analyse causale de la croissance pour evaluer le role des TIC en tant qu’apports de capital et la contribution de ces apports a la croissance de la production. L’etude propose un tour d’horizon international en presentant les resultats des pays du G7. A cette fin, des donnees sur les depenses d’equipement en TIC ont ete recueillies aupres de plusieurs sources et classees de facon a obtenir des mesures du stock de capital sous forme de TIC et des services tires de ce capital. Les differences methodologiques entre les pays de l’OCDE en ce qui concerne les coefficients d’ajustement des prix des ordinateurs ont ete soigneusement prises en compte. Il apparait que les biens d’equipement des TIC ont joue un role important dans la croissance ...

Computer Price Indices and International Growth and Productivity Comparisons

Methodologies to derive price indices for information and communication technology (ICT) products vary between national statistical offices. This may lead to significant differences in measured price changes for these products and there has been concern about the international comparability of volume growth rates of GDP between several OECD countries. This article discusses the possible consequences for measures of economic growth of replacing one set of price indices by another one in the framework of national accounts. It is argued that the issue of ICT deflators cannot be dealt with in isolation and several other factors have to be taken into account, in particular whether ICT products are final or intermediate products, whether they are imported or domestically produced and whether national accounts are set up with fixed or chain weighted index numbers. Overall, results point to modest effects at the aggregate GDP level but may be more significant when it comes to component measures such as volume growth of investment, or of output in a particular industry.

Industry‐Level Productivity Measurement and the 2008 System of National Accounts

The 2008 System of National Accounts recognizes capital services as the conceptually correct way to measure the input of capital into production. This allows setting up an integrated system of industry‐level and aggregate productivity accounts that are consistent with the 2008 SNA. The paper discusses the new aspects in the 2008 SNA and sets out such an integrated system, based on Jorgensons aggregate production possibility frontier and gross output‐based industry productivity measures. Recent results for industry productivity measures for the United States complete the picture.

ICT Investment and Economic Growth in the 1990s

Investment in information technologies has by no means been confined to the United States and yet, average European or Japanese growth experience has been quite different. The paper compares the impact of ICT capital accumulation on output growth in Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis uses a newly compiled database of investment in ICT equipment and software based on the System of National Accounts 1993 (SNA93). Over the past two decades, ICT contributed between 0.2 and 0.5 percentage points per year to economic growth, depending on the country. During the second half of the 1990s, this contribution rose to 0.3 to 0.9 percentage points per year. The paper shows that, despite differences between countries, the United States has not been alone in benefiting from the positive effects of ICT capital investment on economic growth nor was the United States the sole country to experience an acceleration of these ...

Economic Growth in the OECD Area

This paper discusses growth performance in the OECD countries over the past two decades. Special attention is given to developments in labour productivity, allowing for human capital accumulation, and multifactor productivity (MFP), allowing for changes in the composition and quality of physical capital. The paper suggests wide (and growing) disparities in GDP per capita growth, while differences in labour productivity have remained broadly stable. These patterns are explained by different employment growth rates across countries. In the most recent years, a rise in MFP growth in ICT-related industries has boosted aggregate growth in some countries (e.g. the United States) ...

Information And Communication Technology And The Measurement Of Volume Output And Final Demand - A Five-Country Study

Information and communication technology (ICT) products have undergone rapid technical change. Where quality improvements occur, they should be reflected in official price and quantity indices, otherwise there is a tendency to over-estimate price movements and under-estimate volume changes of ICT products. Statistical offices deal with this issue but the degree and nature of quality-adjustment of price indices of ICT products varies considerably between OECD countries. The present study simulates measurement effects on key economic variables (real output, private final consumption, government expenditure, investment, exports and imports) and productivity, under the assumption that the price indices of ICT products are fully quality-adjusted. The paper draws on a large selection of empirical studies to identify differences between quality-adjusted and unadjusted price changes and uses detailed information from input-output tables to assess their weights in final demand. Effects on GDP and its components are quantified for five selected OECD countries.

Output, Outcome, and Quality Adjustment in Measuring Health and Education Services

This paper provides an overview of measuring price and volume changes of the output of health and education providers. In the national accounts, outputs should reflect the results of production and these cannot normally be captured by outcome, the state of health or education of the population. However, we show that outcome information is required when it comes to quality adjustment of output measures. The paper clarifies terminology, and discusses output measurement and quality adjustment methods with a focus on health and education services.

International Comparisons of Levels of Capital Input and Multi-Factor Productivity

Abstract The paper uses a method by Christensen et al. to construct crosscountry comparisons of the levels of capital input, capital and labour productivity and multi-factor productivity. These results are used to decompose international differences in gross domestic product per capita into differences in labour utilization, information and communication technology (ICT) and non-ICT capital intensity and multi-factor productivity for seven Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. We provide Monte Carlo estimates to examine the effects of measurement errors in the base data, and these simulations showed that boundaries for the resulting indicators can be important.

Comparing Labour Productivity Growth in the OECD Area

This paper examines how measurement problems affect international comparisons of labour productivity. It suggests that these measurement problems do not significantly affect the assessment of aggregate productivity patterns in the OECD area. However, these problems do influence the more detailed assessment of productivity growth, notably the role of specific sectors and demand components in aggregate performance. The paper shows that there are only a few significant problems regarding the comparability of nominal GDP across OECD countries, the most important being the treatment of software investment. In most cases, efforts are underway to reduce the size of these differences. Measurement differences for real GDP are also important, although several of these factors have impacts that work in different directions. Moreover, several of these problems primarily affect the distribution of total GDP across different expenditure categories and across different activities, not necessarily ...