Mapping the Productivity Terrain

Abstract

Starting from a broad discussion of the range of debate and interest in productivity, our focus narrows to explore the territory of firm-level productivity. We review how productivity at firm-level has been defined and studied. We then turn our attention to the New Zealand context reviewing recent attempts by several government policy agencies to map the terrain and drivers of productivity. Within these we find some consensus, but also some divergence which we discuss. Finally we identify gaps in knowledge about productivity at the, firm-level, and we outline how our FRST funded 'Building our productivity’ research project aims to study these gaps in order to improve our map of the productivity terrain.