But the panic over a potential reduction of productivity during the NCAA Tournament may be grossly inappropriate.

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Arthur Kroeber of GK Dragonomics, a consultancy, says the country still enjoys a considerable tailwind from urbanisation and a huge potential for productivity gains as it adopts new technology.

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For Japan, a wealth of potential improvement in productivity resides not far away, in China.

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Mr Howard emphasised instead the patient's autonomy and the potential for greater productivity in a world free of government targets.

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The endless restructurings and mergers have definitely distracted many companies, and created a big brain drain, but the underlying intrinsic productivity potential of many of these groups has gone up, not down, from what I can tell.

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Within the Energy 2030 Plan a national strategy to enable every state to realize its potential for energy productivity.

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For those reasons, ships are often designed to operate at a relatively slow speed of 15-20 knots, which inhibits their potential productivity.

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If structural reforms are not implemented, the latest recession may be mild, but, according to Tetsufumi Yamakawa, an economist at Goldman Sachs, long-term potential growth may decline to only 0.6% a year by 2009, as productivity growth stalls and the labour force shrinks.

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The transition period would last at least 12 years and sensitive products, and those where there is little potential for productivity gains, can be excluded (around 20% of the total, according to a recent assessment).

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