The clearest example of the productivity effect of these technologies is the explosion of massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

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As for the effect of exercise on work productivity, there is no evidence connecting the two and we cannot know if exercise itself helps to enhance work productivity.

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Mandating a fixed threshold will also have the perverse effect of lessening incentives to increase productivity in health care and get lower prices from insurers, physicians and hospitals.

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He believes that positive supply-side forces will continue to damp the impact of strong demand on output prices and that productivity gains will continue to damp the effect of higher wages on unit labor costs.

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Will the effect be mostly positive, boosting our productivity and the rate of human innovation?

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In a 2009 paper Mr Glaeser and Matthew Resseger of Harvard University find that in highly skilled areas, city size explains 45% of the variation in worker productivity (it has almost no effect in underskilled cities).

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One study of 19 developed countries found that paid parental leave had a significantly greater positive effect on productivity than unpaid leave.

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Of the two groups without dogs, 80% felt that the dogs in the workplace had no negative effect on productivity.

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