Can Australia Match US Productivity Performance?

CONTENTS

Preliminaries
Contents, Preface, Abbreviations, Key points

1   Introduction and summary
1.1   Background
1.2   What the paper does and says

2   The international productivity frontier
2.1   Productivity and technological leadership over the 20th century
2.2   Frontier shifts: focus on the United States
2.3   Future frontier shifts: the outlook for US productivity growth
2.4   Summary and implications

3   Catch-up and convergence
3.1   Varied evidence of catch-up
3.2   Catch-up and convergence within industries
3.3   Summary and implications

4   Australia's historical performance
4.1   Australia's productivity performance in a convergence perspective
4.2   Industry contributions
4.3   Summary and implications

5   Geographical constraints
5.1   Remoteness and sparseness
5.2   Mapping to industry gaps
5.3   Possible effects on future performance
5.4   Summary and implications

6   Education
6.1   Differences in education and skill
6.2   Mapping to industries
6.3   Future relevance and effects
6.4 Summary and implications

7   Concluding remarks
7.1   The scope for catch-up
7.2   Broad policy implications

A   The industry dimension of US productivity

B   Comparisons of industry productivity levels

C   Projections of educational attainment

References