The Service Sector: Productivity and Growth: Proceedings of the International Conference held in Rome, Italy, May 27–28 1993 (Contributions to Economics)

The economics of the service sector has recently attracted a large attention. At a macroeconomic level, the discussion has been focused on the issues concerning the relationship between the expansion of the service industry and the potential for a stable and sustained growth. Slow productivity growth, due to the largely non tradable nature of the output, lack of competition due either to regulations or to barriers to entry are among the "bads" sometimes associated with a "service led" growth. On the other hand new working places are created in the service industries at a rate much higher than in the industrial ones. Is a lower rate of technological change and the continuing of inflationary tensions the price to pay for a sustained expansion of employment in the service sector? These are in a nutshell the questions that led CElS (Centre for International Studies on Economic Growth - University of Rome "Tor Vergata") to organize the International Seminar on "The Service Sector: Productivity and Growth" held in Rome in May 1993, whose revised proceedings are published in this volume. The economists and academicians invited to the conference have faced the issues mentioned above from different perspectives, but they concentrated especially on the problems relative to growth and productivity. Front Matter....Pages I-2 Introductory Remarks....Pages 3-7 Front Matter....Pages 9-9 Producer Services: Their important Role in Growing Economies....Pages 11-41 Externalities and the Linkages Between Trade Sector and Manufacturing....Pages 43-67 Industrial Prices, Service Prices and Unemployment in Italy and Germany....Pages 69-101 The Growth of Market Service Sector in Italy....Pages 103-156 Indirect Productivity of Business Services, Through Non-Material Investments....Pages 157-173 Front Matter....Pages 175-175 Structure and Change in Distribution System: An Analysis of Seven OECD Member Countries....Pages 177-248 Does Productivity Converge Across Countries and Across Sectors? Empirical Evidences from Eight OECD Countries....Pages 249-284 Productivity Growth in Service and Non-Service Industries: Implications for Convergence....Pages 285-301 The Comparative Performance of Industrial and Service Firms in the Eighties: An Italian Story....Pages 303-333 The Productivity Differential Between Manufacturing and Services in Italy: Technical Progress or Competition Deficit?....Pages 335-355 Two groups of papers are presented in The Service Sector: Productivity and Growth. The first group is devoted to the analysis of the interdependence among the service and the industrial sectors of the economy and to offer some evidence about the development of the service sector in the recent years. The second group of contributions instead is mainly concerned with the problem of the possible differences in productivity among market services and manufacturing industries. These studies are mainly applied and related to EEC and North American countries. They offer an updated view and present evidence that lead to conclusions often quite different from those arising from previous analysis