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Methodologies to derive price indices for information and communication technology (ICT) products vary between national statistical offices. This may lead to significant differences in measured price changes for these products and there has been concern about the international comparability of volume growth rates of GDP between several OECD countries. This article discusses the possible consequences for measures of economic growth of replacing one set of price indices by another one in the framework of national accounts. It is argued that the issue of ICT deflators cannot be dealt with in isolation and several other factors have to be taken into account, in particular whether ICT products are final or intermediate products, whether they are imported or domestically produced and whether national accounts are set up with fixed or chain weighted index numbers. Overall, results point to modest effects at the aggregate GDP level but may be more significant when it comes to component measures such as volume growth of investment, or of output in a particular industry.

This paper proposes a measurement framework that explicitly accounts for the role of natural capital in productivity measurement. It is applied to aggregate economy data from the OECD Productivity Database, with natural capital data from the World Bank. It is shown that the direction of the adjustment to productivity growth depends on the rate of change of natural capital extraction relative to the rate of change of other inputs. The extended framework also makes the contribution of natural capital to economic growth explicit. This can be useful for countries relying on non-renewable resources to better understand the need to develop other sources of growth-human or productive capital-to prepare for times of scarcer resource endowments. The framework can readily be applied to more encompassing natural capital data, once it becomes available.JEL Codes: D24, Q56, Q50

Document complet disponible sur OLIS dans son format d'origine Complete document available on OLIS in its original format DSTI/DOC(2003)14 Unclassified English text only DSTI/DOC(2003)14 2 STI Working Paper SeriesThe Working Paper series of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry is designed to make available to a wider readership selected studies prepared by staff in the Directorate or by outside consultants working on OECD projects. The papers included in the series cover a broad range of issues, of both a technical and policy-analytical nature, in the areas of work of the DSTI. The Working Papers are generally available only in their original language -English or French -with a summary in the other.Comments on the papers are invited, and should be sent to the