of labor productivity, defined as output per worker, and the ratio of workers to total population, and calculate the former for each of the four comprehensive sectors of the economy : agriculture, manufacturing, nonmanufacturing industry ( mining, utilities and construction ), and services. in the most recent worst - performing period, with available data for 1980 – 2005, three basic observations are noteworthy. first, meager per - capita gdp growth during these years was the net result of an increase in the ratio of workers to population, whose effect slightly surpassed that of a fall in aggregate labor productivity. second, aggregate labor productivity fell because, relative to total labor in the economy, production dropped in agriculture and nonmanufacturing more than it grew in manufacturing and services. in other words, the increasing role of manufacturing and services in the mexican economy did not sufficiently compensate for the diminishing influence of the other two, smaller sectors. table 1 third, sectoral labor productivity increased only in the least and in the most productive sectors : agriculture, mainly because of labor emigration, and manufacturing. in the other two sectors labor productivity declined at roughly the same pace. table 2 it seems that if some aspects are highlighted as obstacles to economic expansion, they should be proven to have a significant influence on those sectors identified as negative contributors to productivity growth. specifically, the fall of labor productivity in the services sector should be given more importance than that observed in nonmanufacturing, when the relative sizes of these two sectors in the economy are considered. at a conjectural level, one might identify a possible common characteristic between the two, given that the fall in nonmanufacturing labor productivity has been concentrated in construction and that in services has been generalized, with the only exception being transport, storage, and communications. a large part of both construction and services exhibits a high degree of informality. it is well known that informality is linked to small - scale production, low investment in new technologies, and poor incentives for human capital accumulation. additionally, a prominent feature of large service segments, such as education and health, is a lack of or limited competition among providers, lowering incentives to seek efficiency. on the other hand, one must find possible reasons as to why manufacturing has not registered more robust labor productivity growth. it might be the case that the opening up to foreign competition has taken many years and until recently allowed a certain degree of protection, especially from competition with countries not covered by free trade agreements.

an uneven distribution of the costs and benefits of switching standards, or by uncertainty regarding the movement of rival firms to the new standard. 5 for example, see david p and s greenstein ( 1990 ), “ the economics of compatibility standards : an introduction to recent research ”, economics of innovation and new technology, 1 ( 1 ), pp 3 - 41 ; farrel j and p klemperer ( 2007 ), “ co - ordination and lock - in : competition with switching costs and network effects ”, in m armstrong and r porter ( eds ), handbook of industrial organization, elsevier, amsterdam, pp 1967 - 2072 ; and for the australian context, lowe p ( 2005 ), “ innovation and governance of payment systems ”, address to banktech. 05 conference, sydney, 16 september. for example, see farrel and klemperer ( 2007 ). there can also be, in some cases, a tendency towards overly rapid changes in standards ( so called “ excess momentum ” ), which can lead to the premature adoption of a new standard that is less efficient than the old standard. further, those who benefit disproportionately from a change to a new standard will fail to consider a recent australian example from first principles, therefore, we might expect that achieving agreement among australian financial institutions on development of the payments system might not be easy. so it has proved. there are a number of examples of this, but a recent one is the efforts by the industry at reform of the atm system. as you may be aware, there have recently been some changes to the way atm transactions at machines not owned by your bank are priced and paid for. instead of paying a relatively obscure “ foreign atm fee ”, that was charged to your bank account at the end of the month, people are now presented with the cost of the transaction in real time. these changes will, in our view, allow competitive forces to come into play in a way that was previously impossible. but it is the process of achieving the reforms, more than the likely benefits, on which i want to focus this evening. in particular, it required changes in the bilateral links between all the major players in the system. in this sense, the problems were akin to those of the us railway system – how do we get all the competitors to agree to change their bilateral links in a standardised way? work by the industry on the reforms started as long ago as 2001. while some progress was made