Productivity Trends in the United States [antikvár]

Basic Facts on Productivity Ghange AN INTRODUCTION BY SOLOMON FABRICANT Importance of the Facts Productivity has been much discussed in recent years, and too frequently misunderstood. Productivity deserves the attention that it has received, for it is a measure of the efficiency with which resources are converted into the commodities and services that men want. Higher productivity is a means to better levels of economic well-being and greater national strength. Higher productivity is a major source of the increment in income over which men bargain and sometimes quarrel. And higher-or lower-productivity affects costs, prices, profits, output, employment, and investment, and thus plays a part in business fluctuations, in inflation, and in the rise and decline of industries. Indeed, in one way or another, productivity enters virtually every broad economic problem, whatever current form or new name the problem takes-industrialization, or research and development, or automation, or tax reform, or cost-price squeeze, or improvement factor, or wage inflation, or foreign dollár shortage. Despite its importance and the wide attention paid it, productivity is a subject surrounded by considerable confusion. For this there are a number of reasons. First, people employ the same term but mean different things. As a consequence, various figures on productivity change come into use, and these often differ in significant degree. Further, the rate of productivity change is not a fixed quantity. Professor Kendrick's figures show that it varies from one period to another. What the past or current rate of productivity change is depends on the particular period for which the calculation is made. If no reference is made to the period, and if the period varies considerably from one context to another, confusion results. In addition, the statistical information available for calculating productivity Note. A longer version of this summary was published by the National Bureau in 1959 as Occasional Paper 63. Included here are alsó somé paragraphs from a statement presented before the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress in April 1959. John W. Kendrick and Thor Hultgren made helpful comments on a first draft, as did Moses Abramovitz, Jack A1 termán, Gary S. Becker, Leon Greenberg, Oswald W. Knauth, Geoffrey H. Moore, and Theodore W. Schultz. The writer is deeply grateful alsó to Maude Pech.