THE EUROPE–U.S. PRODUCTIVITY GAP IN A REAR‐VIEW MIRROR: WILL MEASUREMENT DIFFERENCES IN THE SERVICES SECTOR OUTPUT PLEASE RISE?
探讨1995年后欧美生产率差距是否源于服务业统计测量差异，发现美国服务业生产者价格指数项目在范围和实施时间上领先欧洲，测量差异可能是生产率差距的主要嫌疑因素。
Abstract The deterioration in 1995 of Europe's productivity performance relative to the U.S. coincided with the ‘renaissance’ of the U.S. statistical system, which can be regarded, by now, as the frontier in official statistics. This paper raises the natural question whether the European statistical system was ‘left at the station’ while its U.S. counterpart ‘departed’, making it possible for measurement differences to become the primary suspect for the existing productivity gap. My retrospective review of the development path in the services sector productivity statistics suggests that Europe lags significantly behind the U.S. in the services producer price index program, both in terms of scope and timing of its implementation. Accordingly, the role of these measurement differences in the post‐1995 Europe–U.S. productivity story cannot reasonably be ruled out. The paper concludes with a ‘structured guess’ that provides a circumstantial evidence on the benefits generated by the upgrades in the U.S. services sector statistics. The results show that these enhancements led to two kinds of benefits during the post‐1995 period – a considerable reduction in the contribution of industries that traditionally dampened the aggregate productivity trend combined with a larger contribution of those that generally lifted it. This contrasts markedly with Europe where the contribution of these two sources remained unchanged in the meantime.