Thus, the Bank missed a golden opportunity to be a pace-setter in this area in the emerging world. Another regret is our failure as the main provider of data on banking, finance and international trade to the IMF to graduate to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standards.
However, we have scant ability to infer the pace at which such gains will play out and, therefore, their implications for the growth of productivity over the longer run. It is, of course, the rate of change of productivity over time, and not its level, that influences the persistent changes in unit labor costs and hence the rate of inflation.