Differences in Economic Performance: Some Comments on Pollin and Dymski

Abstract

The growth, employment and distribution experiences made in OECD countries after the first oil price shock reveal some remarkable characteristics as well as differences. Compared with the 1960s the rate of growth of output has been more than halved. The same holds for the rate of growth of labour productivity. The widespread productivity slowdown is all the more puzzling since against the background of the sharp increase in unemployment rates in most countries and the diffusion of new technologies based on the microelectronics revolution, the spectre of technological unemployment has come to centre-stage again and the old controversy between labour displacement pessimism and compensation optimism has been revived in recent years. At the same time we can watch a rising inequality in income distribution, although the general slowdown in wage increases and rise in profit margins differ among OECD countries.