Has the productivity of retail food stores really declined?

Despite the fact that other factors of production have been substituted for labor, and that scanner technology has come into widespread use, the BLS index of labor productivity for retail food stores has been declining for sometime. The purpose of this paper is to study this puzzling decline in measured productivity. The results indicate that the decline in the BLS index is due to changes in services offered by retail food stores that are not incorporated into the index, and that productivity increased if these services are accounted for. (C) 2003 by New York University. Published by Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.