WP1: Input, Output and Productivity Trends Indicators

 

Objective:  To present an overview of trends in output, inputs and productivity in European service sectors.

 

Main contact:  indicser@contacts.bham.ac.uk

WP leader: Marcel Timmer (m.p.timmer@rug.nl)

 

Full details of the workpackage can be found in the description of work. 

 

WP1 provides the key data framework that the other work packages will build upon.   It aims to add additional variables to EU KLEMS and deal with various upcoming revisions to the underlying data. 

 

The first task is to critically evaluate series in National Accounts, in particular output in market services and measures of labour force skills. This will include an overview of state-of-the-art insights in methodologies currently used to measure the output of services such as trade, transport, finance and business services and comparing the state of measurement across Europe building on existing surveys by Eurostat and the OECD. The emphasis is on cataloguing differences in order to flag up potential comparability problems in existing National Accounts measures of output in non-financial market services. Overviews of measurement practice in finance and non-market services are made as part of the other dedicated work packages (WP 4, 6 and 7).  This will also critically evaluate the comparability of skill categories across countries in EUKLEMS and investigate the use of pan-European datasets to extend the series.

 

The second task of WP1 is to extend the country coverage. With the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, country coverage in EUKLEMS will be expanded to cover the entire EU-27.

 

WP1 will also explore how to incorporate forthcoming revisions in the system of National Accounts and changes in industrial classifications. These revisions may be due to international initiatives such as the new System of National Accounts (SNA08) or the new International System of Industrial Classification (ISIC rev.4). An important revision is the capitalisation of R&D expenditures in the SNA08 which will gradually be included in future revisions of SNA statistics. This revision will also have implications for historical series which needs to be addressed. The change in industrial classification will also have far-reaching implications as activities will be shifted from manufacturing to services industries and also between services sectors.

 

In the final stage of this work package, the extended database will be used for analyses of the changing structure of the services sector. This will result in a paper describing and analysing changes in the sources of growth in each industry, the relative importance of the different services industries and the linkages between services industries and the rest of the economy. The analysis will be undertaken across Europe, Japan and the US.