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Publishing in the knowledge economy
The industry today
4.4 International comparisons of
productivity and innovation
We have noted already the scepticism with
which international comparisons should be
treated. Figure 4.11 shows productivity indices
for publishing in five countries during the 1990s,
based on data from the OECD, as compiled by
the Groningen Growth and Development Centre
in the Netherlands. Productivity is measured in
value added (1995 prices) per worker,
unadjusted for hours worked. In addition the UK
employment figure excludes the self-employed.
For all countries the index is set to 100 in 1990,
except for Germany (1991).
The pattern of change in productivity across
these five countries is at variance with the
standard picture of economy-wide productivity
growth in the 1990s. The US shows the
weakest productivity growth with the highest
rates of growth in continental Europe. The UK
lies somewhere in between, showing gentle
growth in productivity. Other industries covered
in the Groningen indices exhibit a more similar
pattern to the standard one, so it would appear
that the performance of publishing is, in fact, at
variance with the overall international
productivity picture. There are some possible
explanations: US companies suffered from the
strong dollar in the second half of the 1990s,
while conversely, Eurozone countries benefited
from the weakening Euro. With its strengths in
scientific publishing, the Netherlands has
particularly benefited from the strong dollar, as
has the German publishing industry. There is
other evidence from the Newspaper Association
of America that there was a continuing decline
in productivity in that part of the industry. We
have also been told in a number of interviews
that the diffusion of new technology and more
efficient working practices has perhaps not gone
as far within US newspaper publishing as might
be expected, and not as far as it has in the UK.
It must be emphasised that this graph depicts
growth trends, not absolute levels of
productivity. Further international comparisons
for sub-sectors of the industry are made in the
relevant sections of the report.
Reliable figures for comparisons of innovation
are even harder to find. The UK
competitiveness indicators uses data from the
second Community Innovation Survey (CIS)
(Figure 4.12), but at the level of the industry this
source becomes quite unreliable. ‘Publishing’ is
included with printing and wood pulp and only
133 firms in the UK are included in the sample.
It is also quite dated (from 1996-97 – although
CIS 3 is currently under preparation) and so its
relevance to 2002 must be taken with a pinch of
salt. The figure below shows the percentage of
firms in each industry stating that they
introduced a new or improved product within the
last year. The percentage of UK firms in this
category is above the average for the European
Union (plus Norway) as a whole, but below the
figures for Germany and the Netherlands.
Figure 4.13 illustrates the positive trade
balance in printed matter, which is the nearest
available data to publishing. The data is in
dollars – in national currency terms the picture
for Germany and the Netherlands would look
much better. Naturally this is not an ideal
definition, and it also should be pointed out that
UK publishers have made the decision to print
a great deal of material abroad both for cost
reasons and to facilitate access to third markets.
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