The post 2004 slowdown in productivity growth in developed nations has led to speculation that mismeasurement of digital activities within the national accounts may be responsible. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) modelling of potential missing output confirms the findings of Syverson (2017), Ahmad & Schreyer (2016) and Byrne, Fernald & Reinsdorf (2016) that unrecorded digital activities were of insufficient magnitude to explain the productivity slowdown. While there may be room for improvement in data sources and methods more broadly, conceptually digital activities are captured in the National Accounts framework.

Citation: Burnell, D. S. & Elnasri, A. (2020). Does Measurement of Digital Activities Explain Productivity Slowdown? The Case for Australia. Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 517-518-519, 123–137. https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2020.517t.2022