The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. There is now intensive discussion about its impact on productivity going forward. A major new study on Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies, expands on previous work in its wide-ranging scope (productivity growth, convergence, and employment impacts); its focus on emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs); and the breadth of its approaches (macroeconomic, sectoral, and firm-level). It is accompanied by a comprehensive dataset of productivity measures for up to 164 advanced economies and EMDEs for 1980-2018 and introduces a new sectoral dataset of productivity. The study documents that the global productivity growth slowdown after the 2007-09 financial crisis affected more than two-thirds of countries. The COVID-19 pandemic may leave lasting scars which will further delay income convergence in EMDEs, where productivity is, on average, only one-fifth of the advanced-economy average. Reflecting the multitude of sources of the slowdown, rekindling productivity growth will require a broad-based policy response. Shifts in the post-pandemic global economic landscape may offer opportunities for those countries that implement reforms to take advantage of them.
