Wrap-up notes, GFP Ottawa 2018

1. A few wrap-up notes
for OECD 3rd Annual Conference of of
the Global Forum on Productivity
“Firms, Workers and Disruptive Technologies – Ensuring
Sustainable and Inclusive Growth”
Mike Veall veall@mcmaster.ca
McMaster University
Productivity Partnership – Partenariat productivité
https://productivitypartnership.ca
Thanks to Gilbert Cette and Peter Nicholson. I was not in
Lisbon or Budapest. Here: B sessions.
1

2. Not rocket science…

3. Things I learned:
• McGovern (here), Schembri (here), Pereira (here):
the importance to government policy including central banking
• a well-functioning overall economy might prove particularly valuable

4. 1. Little attention to Robert Gordon.
2. A disruption seems more likely than not.
3. “Common” cause.
4. Public policy: intellectual property/intangible
capital problem, a public supports (including
education) problem, a regulatory problem.
But also a public finance problem….

5. 1. Is disruption “insured” by growth?
Low growth High growth
Consequent
disruption: small
Gordon ?
Consequent
disruption: high
? Mokyr

6. 2. The AI disruption is more likely than not
•Furman and Seamans (2018)
•Alexopoulos and Cohen (2018)
•Bartelsman (here), Corrado (here)
•But Bessen (here), Remes (here), Turok (here),
Quintini (here), Blit (here)
• job losses vs. job quality losses

7. 3. Common cause
Average annual growth rate of labor productivity per hour
Smoothed indicator (HP filter, λ = 500) - Whole economy – 1891-2016 – In %
Source: Bergeaud, Cette and Lecat (2016) - See: www.longtermproductivity.com
7
-1%
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
8%
9%
United States Euro Area United Kingdom Japan Canada

9. 4. A public finance problem (session 2b)
•if measured GDP misses things, likely gov’t
revenue-to-GDP ratio will fall
•maybe we will find that a lot of AI comes from
the Cayman Islands
•maybe there isn’t as much disruption insurance
from growth as I thought

10. Thank you and bon voyage!

11. • Things to add? More about inclusivity/sustainability
• Productivity growth as a spillover: gov’t policy

12. 4. A measurement problem would be a public
finance problem
•If GDP per capita isn’t capturing “true”
productivity growth (missing transactions,
missing home production productivity growth…
… then likely government revenues are not
either.