ECONOMIC AFFAIRS: What is productivity and why is it important?*

Anyone who even glances at the business pages of our daily newspapers will realise productivity is a perennial topic of discussion. Few people, however, can tell you what productivity is and why it is important.
In its simplest economic sense, productivity is defined as a measure of how efficiently and effectively the main factors of production — labour and capital — combine to generate output.
Economists often talk about factors of production. The two main factors of produ…

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