Productivity: What Is It, and Why Do We Care About It?: Disaggregation by Source and Sector Yields Important Insights. From: Business Economics | Date: October 1, 2001| Author: Steindel, Charles; Stiroh, Kevin J. | COPYRIGHT 2001 The National Association of Business Economists. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Economists, business analysts, and policymakers have all focused considerable attention on U.S. productivity growth in recent years. This paper presents a broad overview of productivity--both labor and total factor--and discusses why it is such an important topic. We begin with the official U.S. productivity statistics prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and discuss several stylized facts. We show how productivity relates to critically important variables like long-run ...

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