Trade, investment and technology flows play a crucial role in productivity catch up.

Yes, the seeds are more expensive, but the rise in production offsets the additional cost.

Instead of the productivity surge experienced in the US, it has gone through a sort of productivity holiday, with serious consequences.

And, despite the spike in unemployment, productivity growth in the eurozone is decidedly negative.

All these factors contribute to high levels of fertility, morbidity and mortality, as well as to low economic productivity.

The growing proportion of low productivity labor has also contributed to rising inequality in American society.

Cost increases were limited by technological advances leading to productivity gains.

Increasing service sector employment can either indicate a successful transition of the economy towards higher productivity levels, or reflect high numbers of hidden unemployed people in low productivity services. 28

The rise in the amount of time spent commuting is a drag on both national productivity and the quality of life in modern cities.

The service sector is more apt to absorb hidden unemployment than the industrial sector, because it is less capital intensive and small scale production predominates.30 Often, people are not pulled to the service sector because of its high productivity growth rather, they are pushed by faltering productivity in other sectors, particularly agriculture.

Then a decade of nominal wage growth that out paced productivity gains led to a rise in unit labor costs, real exchange rate appreciation, and large current account deficits.

Without external constraints, public and private expenditure grew precipitously in many countries on the eurozone periphery, while wages rose faster than productivity.

Paying for Productivity

Production Opportunities

During the post Kobe reconstruction period, world demand was buoyant and global productivity surged, owing to China s gathering boom, America s information technology and communications revolution, and political and economic convergence in Europe.

A decade of wage growth exceeding productivity gains led to real appreciation, loss of competitiveness, and large current account deficits.

Assuming slower growth in the labor force than in the past decade, no rise in productivity due to capital accumulation, and a decline in multifactor productivity growth to its pre 2000 average implies that annual potential GDP growth will be only 1.4 .

Lower productivity and higher unit labor costs eroded firms' willingness to hire, leaving Europe with chronically higher unemployment than in the US.

The Coming Productivity Revolution

Today s Productivity Paradox

Improving farm productivity.

Productive Options

(b) Increasing productivity

C. Improving productivity

We can get productivity up.

And here's productivity.

Likewise, while reducing employment is one way to boost productivity, it implies high macroeconomic costs in terms of lost revenues and higher social spending.

Productivity methods are being promoted through the Department of Management's Productivity Handbook, and offices' productivity innovations are recognized through the UN 21 awards programme.

The height of the root is the height of the tree.

We already have some indicators of productivity on this stuff.

Narrator (Video)

Indeed, because oil prices were rising while the dollar was declining, capacity expansion by oil firms failed to meet forecasts for non OPEC production in the last three years.

Despite some progress, the region continues to struggle with negative productivity growth rates, low productivity employment and underemployment.

America, China, and the Productivity Paradox

(a) Production and production capacity

Raising agricultural productivity.

Blissful productivity. I love it.

With so much underutilized productive capacity today, and with immediate economic prospects so dismal, the risk of serious inflation is minimal.

That means investing in education and building incentives to increase productivity through changes in products, processes, or organization.

Productivity growth has an impact on poverty because productivity drives wage increases, which help to improve the standard of living.

As a new IMF report acknowledges, structural reforms there have failed to produce the intended effects, partly because they ran up against political and implementation difficulties, and partly because their potential to increase growth in the short run was overstated.

Height

At the same time, a comparison of productivity between the top 25 European and American companies shows that regulations are driving differences in productivity.

The persistence of inequalities in income, assets and opportunities exacerbates poverty, and high unemployment rates and lack of access to resources, such as land, credit, markets and information, further limit the productive capacity of poor people.

Took note of document DP 2005 CRP.2 on the update on the progress achieved in the partnership between UNDP and UNIFEM