The OECD view

Jane Bourke writes that a recent OECD report – “The Future of Productivity” – presents a new perspective on what drives national productivity growth. The OECD explains that in every world economy there are some ‘frontier firms’, which are internationally competitive and match global high standards in productivity. However, the majority of firms – up to 80 per cent – are not in this category. These firms may have a more domestic market orientation, and much lower average productivity and the OECD calls them ‘non-frontier firms’.

Timothy Taylor writes the report argues that slower productivity in high-income countries is not because cutting-edge firms are slowing down in their productivity growth, but rather because other firms aren’t keeping up. To put it another way, productivity growth isn’t diffusing across economies.

Chiara Criscuolo writes that the slow productivity growth of the “average” firm masks the fact that a small cadre of firms are experiencing robust gains. Timothy Taylor writes that the evidence of Figure 11 below suggests that the possibilities for productivity growth haven’t slowed down, but that large parts of the economy are having a harder time putting the practices that lead to faster productivity growth into effect.

 

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