1. Productivity Data in Europe: EU KLEMS and Beyond: Measurement challenges
Presentation at World KLEMS, 2018
Mary O’Mahony
King’s Business School, King’s College London

2. (1) Measuring the volume of service sector activities
Requires good measures of prices to construct volume measures
There is an extensive literature on international comparisons of measurement methods and practice
E.g. Eurostat-OECD Methodological Guide for Developing Producer Price Indices for Services, documents produced by the Voorburg group, ONS reports
ESCoE research carried out an audit of SPPIs in 16 countries and 31 services activities from , a sample of nearly 3000 annual price changes
Looking at impact of measurement method on price changes, e.g. using model pricing versus time based

3. Relative changes in SPPIs: Some Examples
Annual average growth in SPPI, relative to GDP deflator

4. Relative changes in SPPIs: Some Examples
Annual average growth in SPPI, relative to GDP deflator

5. Relative changes in SPPIs: Some Examples

6. Main Results
The measurement method appears to matter - The preliminary results suggest that growth in prices measured using model pricing (MP) is about 1% lower per annum than that using time based methods (TB).
A back of the envelope calculation suggests that using MP rather than TB might raise labour productivity in industry M, Professional, Scientific and Technical in the UK, from 0.8% per annum to 1.7%, for the period
Future work will attempt to control for other variables that impact on prices, e.g. market structure, regulation and adoption of IT technology
And then use results for sensitivity analysis of productivity at the industry level

7. (2) Labour Markets
Conventional division of employment by qualification/educational attainment is insufficient to capture labour quality
Focus on tasks/jobs rather than qualifications
Plan to examine a number of additional dimensions:
Division by occupational group
Non-traditional jobs – self employed and the gig economy
Migration status – Skill background of migrants
Aging population