Zvi Griliches

"Zvi Griliches was a modern master of empirical economics. In this short book, he recounts what he and others have learned about the sources of economic growth, conveying along the way how he viewed research problems. For Griliches, economic theorizing without measurement is merely the fashioning of parables, but measurement without theory is blind. Judgment enables one to strike the right balance."--Jacket.

Zvi Griliches, a world-renowned scholar and a pioneer in the field of productivity growth, has compiled in a single volume his work on research and development (R & D) and productivity. Griliches addresses the relationship between R & D and productivity, one of the most complex yet vital issues in today's business world. Using econometric techniques, he establishes this connection and measures its magnitude for firm-, industry-, and economy-level data. Several of these papers incorporate French and Japanese productivity data to provide a comparative perspective, and one new paper outlines future directions for productivity research. A comprehensive introduction puts the papers in the context of Griliches's distinguished body of work.

"Is the fall in overall productivity growth in the United States and other developed countries related to the rising share of the service sectors in the economy? Since services represent well over half of the U.S. gross national product, it is also important to ask whether these sectors have had a slow rate of growth, as this would act as a major drag on the productivity growth of the overall economy and on its competitive performance. In this timely volume, leading experts from government and academia argue that faulty statistics have prevented a clear understanding of these issues."--BOOK JACKET. "The contributors suggest that current measurement methodology may be underestimating the contribution of services to productivity growth in the economy as a whole. If government statistics understate output, then they also overstate price increases and misrepresent productivity growth.^ Such mismeasurement would distort our views of how fast incomes are growing and how high inflation is."--BOOK JACKET. "When it comes to measuring output in services, it is not exactly clear what is being transacted, what the output is, and what precisely is covered by payment for a given service. Moreover, "service sectors" is ambiguous. For example, services are defined as whatever is nontangible and not a commodity, yet electricity, a tangible item, is considered a service, and gas, while regarded as a commodity if bottled, is a service when it comes from a pipe."--BOOK JACKET. "Government economists from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics offer a detailed evaluation of the present methods and theory underlying service sector statistics, including the consumer price index and labor productivity indexes. Other contributors discuss wholesale and retail trade, the stock market, banking, education, day care, and transportation.^ The volume provides an international perspective with studies of France and Sweden, among other countries."--BOOK JACKET. "The best currently available overview of present measurement practices and their short-comings, this volume also suggests possible solutions to the problems of calculating service sector statistics. It will be valuable reading for government economists concerned with these issues, as well as academic and business economists who study output, productivity growth, and inflation."--BOOK JACKET.