Productivity Measures, Italy

Data source(s) used: On 4th October 2014 Istat released the new national accounts series consistent with the new European system of national and regional accounts (Esa2010) Manual. In conjunction with the introduction of the Esa2010 Manual, Italy as other Eu Member States proceeded to develop a comprehensive revision of the estimate of national accounts. The transition to a new version of accounting rules is also the most suitable time to introduce new methods of measurement and new data sources that have become available in recent years. This results in a significant change to the time series previously released. Productivity measures now released are based on new national accounts data. The revision of the data underlying the productivity statistics results in a revision to the previously published productivity series.Productivity measures allow assessing the contribution of factors that determine output growth. Such measurement is implemented in the framework of the sources of growth (or growth accounting) analysis, an analytical approach that allows to decompose the growth of output in the contributions of labour and capital input and a residual component, the so-called multifactor productivity.Multifactor productivity measures the contributions of technical progress not embodied in capital goods (e.g. factors such as innovations in the production process and organizational developments), improvements in the level of education and skills of employed and other factors such as business cycle, economies of scale, externalities and also measurement errors.Output is chain linked valued added at basic prices. Labour input is measured as total hours worked by all persons engaged in production (both employees and self-employed). Capital input is measured as the volume of capital services provided by the stocks of three categories of ICT assets (hardware, communication equipment and computer software), eight categories of tangible non-ICT assets (non-ICT machinery and equipment, furniture, road transport equipment, other transport equipment, livestock, tree and plant resources, construction works and ownership transfer costs) and three categories of intangible non-ICT assets (research and development, entertainment, artistic and literary originals and mineral explorations).Productivity measures are estimated using national accounts data released in accordance with NACE Rev.2 classification. Estimates are provided for 38, 21, 10 and 3 industries and for the total economy. Both industry level and aggregate estimates are calculated net of real estate activities, of activities of households, of activities of extraterritorial organizations and of all activities of the General government sector. In 2011 the above defined sector accounted for 70,4& of total value added and 83,0& of total hours worked.