The Spanish economic Miracle: a disaggregated approach to productivity growth, 1958-1975

En este trabajo se analizan las fuentes del crecimiento español durante 1958-1975 desde una perspectiva sectorial, siguiendo una metodología similar a la desarrollada por Jorgenson, Gollop y Fraumeni (1987). Para ello se mide la contribución de los inputs intermedios, el capital, el trabajo y la productividad total de los factores al crecimiento del output total para 25 ramas productivas. Los resultados atribuyen más de la mitad del crecimiento del output al crecimiento de la Productividad Total de los Factores. Este crecimiento de la productividad fue de alcance general aunque no estuvo uniformemente repartido y se apoyó en una potente contribución de algunas industrias manufactureras compartida con avances significativos en los transportes y en las comunicaciones.This paper exploits sectorial growth accounting methodology in a similar way to Jorgenson, Gollop and Fraumeni (1987) in order to provide additional insight into the sources of Spanish economic growth. We measure the contribution of intermediate inputs, capital, labour and total factor productivity to the increase in total output for 25 productive branches. We also analyse sectorial contributions to overall productivity growth and discuss the role of pioneering sectors in the whole transformation. The findings presented attribute more than fifty per cent of output growth to improvement in TFP. This productivity growth was unevenly distributed and was fuelled by some potent manufacturing industries together with advances in transportation and communications.The Spanish Ministry of Education (Grant SEC 2002-01595) supports this research

Disaggregated productivity growth and technological progress in the interpretation of Spanish economic growth, 1958-1975

Spanish economic records in terms of GDP growth and convergence to European levels in the sixties, provide an excellent opportunity to look at a central question underlying in the interpretation of any process of economic growth. The relevance of industrial specific technological progress is confronted to a general and multifaceted productivity change coming from a variety of sectors and causes. This paper exploits sectoral growth accounting methodology in two different ways in order to answer this crucial question revisited recently by historiography with reference to British Industrial Revolution and to Information and Telecommunications Technologies. First, we calculate TFP growth following the Kendrick approach (1961) and using four input-output tables corresponding to 1958, 1962, 1970 and 1975 disaggregated at 25 productive branches. And Second, we examine the impact of electricity and electric machinery and equipment as a General Purpose Technology (GPT) in Spanish economic growt

El coste de uso del capital en la explicación del boom de la inversión europea de posguerra

Post-war Europe provides an opportunity to study the importance of relative prices of capital, and the user cost of capital in particular, in explaining the convergence in investment rates between countries of similar "social capabilities" and income levels. After Second World War, at time as a new international order was established, European countries experienced a rapid process of income growth and convergence. In the interpretation of this process a prominent role has been attributed to technological progress and "catch-up" to the technological leader, the United States. Investment decisions are the way for embodying new technological progress, but investment takes place only when incentive exists. Among these incentives, recent empirical literature on economic growth highlights the role of relative prices of capital in explaining differences in investment rates and income growth between countries with very different income levels. But when we reduce the sample to countries closed in income levels and "social capabilities", we can demonstrate that, although the relative cost of capital converged over time and could help to explain income convergence, other factors were more significant in explaining the increase in investment rates. More important than the user cost of capital in the investment decision, was general prosperity caused by the demand increase

Regional income inequality in France : what does history teach us?

This paper studies regional income inequality in France since mid-nineteenth century. Given the dominant role played by Île-de-France and the city of Paris, which inspired the publication of “Paris et le désert française” (Gravier, 1947) and a debate on regional development in the aftermath of World War II, France seems an ideal scenario to examine the dynamics of regional income. In doing so, we first document the existing evidence before and after the development of national accounting. Using different approaches, several studies have produced regional (département, NUTS3) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates from 1840 to 1930. Thus, our first contribution is to present these findings, assess the appropriateness of each methodology, and address potential concerns. The comparison of existing estimates for 1861-1930 raises some doubts about the pattern of regional inequality followed since 1861 to 1911. Hence we present new estimates for 1860-1930 based in the Geary and Stark (2002) method. In short, our estimates sum up new evidence in favour of an incessant decline in regional inequality since mid 19th up to 1930 and turn down the hypothesis of a potential U-shaped pattern in France since mid 19th century to nowadays. Additionally, we found that the use of nominal relative wages could overestimate the level or regional income inequality

Institutions, Knowledge Accumulation and Productivity Growth in the Second Half of the XXth

This paper studies the relevance of institutional differences in the way knowledge determines productivity for a set of 21 OECD countries in the second half of the XXth century. The relationship between TFP and knowledge related variables is reconsidered after controlling for a new set of institutional variables tailored to represent the post WWII institutions: the Welfare State and international trade and capital flows liberalization. We estimate the impact of innovation variables over productivity during the Golden Age as compared to the whole period 1953-2007, after controlling by these specific institutional variables. Additionally, we distinguish the particular impact of these relationships for five groups of countries following Amable (2006) classification of different kinds of capitalism. Our results suggest institutions determine the response of TFP to the knowledge variables and that the resulting elasticities are higher during the Golden Age. We find that there are not significant differences between the different groups and the market oriented economies with regard to the elasticity of TFP to the indoor innovation, with the exception of Japan. However, the results suggest that in Anglo-Saxon market oriented economies, international spillovers of technology have a higher impact on TFP. Additionally, in continental and Mediterranean European countries and Japan, TFP is more sensitive to human capital accumulation than in the market-oriented economies (the US and the UK)

The origins of economic growth and regional income inequality in South-West Europe 1870-1950

This study focuses on South-West Europe, an area comprising France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, to evaluate inequality in regional income between 1870 and 1950. To do this, information on a decadal basis on regional population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 171 regions (84 French départements, 22 Italian regioni, 18 Portuguese distritos and 49 Spanish provincias) has been collected. Regional inequalities increased between 1870 and 1910 but subsequently tended to flatten out through until 1950. In the first period, regional disparities increased mainly driven by a handful of French and Spanish regions in northern France, such as the Paris basin, Catalonia, the Basque-Country and northern Italy. In the second period, inequality flattened out, driven by the incorporation of new regions on the path of modern economic growth. The study also shows the evolution towards a bimodal, polarized pattern of regional income distribution in 1910-1950 with two convergence clubs. The richest regions were clustering in northern France, the Paris basin and the north of Italy. Meanwhile, most of southern Italy and the vast majority of the Spanish and Portuguese regions already occupied the bottom positions in the income distribution ranking. This point to the emergence of the core-periphery pattern that characterizes much of South-West Europe today