GGDC PRODUCTIVITY LEVEL DATABASE: INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF OUTPUT, INPUTS AND PRODUCTIVITY AT THE INDUSTRY LEVEL Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer* Groningen Growth and Development Centre University of Groningen The Netherlands * Corresponding author: Marcel P. Timmer, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, NL-9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands, e-mail:
[email protected], tel. + 31 50 363 3653, fax + 31 50 363 7337. Acknowledgements The research on which this paper is based is part of the EU KLEMS project on Growth and Productivity in the European Union. This project was supported by the European Commission, Research Directorate General as part of the 6th Framework Programme, Priority 8, "Policy Support and Anticipating Scientific and Technological Needs". In addition, financial support from the NSF (Project “Integrating Expenditure and Production Estimates in International Comparisons”) is gratefully acknowledged. Many thanks to Mary O’Mahony and Mari Kangasniemi who provided additional data for the breakdown of labour skill categories. The paper benefitted from useful suggestions and comments from seminar participants at a DG ECFIN workshop, the PWT 2008 Workshop in Philadelphia, the final EU KLEMS conference in Groningen and the 30th IARIW conference in Portoroz. Abstract In this paper we introduce the GGDC Productivity Level database. This database provides comparisons of output, inputs and productivity at a detailed industry level for a set of thirty OECD countries. It complements the EU KLEMS growth and productivity accounts by providing comparative levels and follows it in terms of country and industry coverage, variable definition and basic data (O’Mahony and Timmer, 2008).