On concepts and measures of changes in productivity: a special issue in honour of Luigi Pasinetti

This special issue of PSL Quarterly Review is devoted to the Solow-Pasinetti debate on productivity and technological progress. Florencia Sember guides the reader through the main aspects of the debate, calling attention to those precursor features of a bifurcation that would later distinguish two competing approaches to growth theory. Ariel Wirkierman delves deep into the topic of productivity definition and measurement from a Classical perspective, as opposed to a more traditional standpoint. Gabriel Brondino, Miguel Casau Guirao and Facund Fora Alcalde put forward a method for computing total labour productivity in an open economy, following Pasinetti’s hint to measure labour embodied in imports as the domestic labour necessary to produce the corresponding exports. Finally, Hernan Alejandro Roitbarg, Francisco Leiva and Joaquin Lucero employ a subsystem approach to examine the rise and fall of productivity in Argentina over the period 2004-2019.