>I remember an issue of the LBO from the mid-90s in which Doug pointed out
>how much Germany and France had closed the productivity gap with America.
>Germany, in particular, was within the margin of error of the statistics and
>therefore the difference in their numbers and America's was statistically
>insignificant. Does this new report suggest that the long relative decline
>of America's productivity is over, or that the boom has temporarily masked
>the still underlying weakness?
It's pretty certain that while the U.S. strongly outgrew the EU and especially Japan, U.S. productivity growth exceeded theirs, since productivity is in large part cyclical. But most other countries don't use the very flattering technique of measuring real output that the U.S. does, so comparisons are very difficult across countries. I don't know how the BLS handled it, but the European Central Bank and the Bundesbank have argued that if you use similar techniques, the gap between U.S. and EU growth rates (and productivity growth) shrinks considerably. And, recent revisions to U.S. productivity stats show the late 1990s to be much less miraculous than was thought at first. So, I'd guess that U.S. productivity growth was stronger than the other two metropoles in the late 1990s, but not by the margin the offical numbers say.
Doug