Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The primary aim of the research project was to present an overview of Britain's relative competitive performance in the postwar period. Previous research in this area has concentrated on either the total economy or on manufacturing. The aim of the project was to broaden the scope of research by examining competitive performance for all sectors of the aggregate economy. To do so, a dataset was constructed to enable measurement of productivity (both labour and total factor productivity) and unit labour costs comparing Britain to four of her major competitors, i.e. the US, France, Germany and Japan. The research was concerned with to what extent the performance at the aggregate economy level was affected by the inclusion of non-market services (health, education and government), which are poorly measured in the national accounts. Differences in performance between service sectors and production industries were also analysed.Main Topics:The dataset contains the raw data necessary to enable an evaluation of Britain's relative competitive performance at the sector level. Hence the dataset contains annual time series, from 1950 to 1995, on real output (generally value added), number of persons engaged, average annual hours worked, net capital stocks, labour force skills and labour's share of value added. It also includes benchmark estimates of relative productivity levels for 1993. The data are available for a maximum of 33 sectors, some of which are broad sectors and some comprise sub-industries with these broad sectors. The sectors included are : 1. Agriculture, forestry and fishing; 2. Mining and oil refining (2.1 oil and gas extraction, 2.2 other mining, 2.3 mineral oil refining); 3. Utilities (3.1 electricity, 3.2 gas, 3.3 water supply); 4. Manufacturing 5. Construction 6. Distributive trades (6.1 wholesale trade, 6.2 retail trade, 6.3 hotels and catering); 7. Transport and communications (7.1...