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The ‘Growth Disease’ at 50 – Baumol after Oulton

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  • Hartwig, Jochen
  • Krämer, Hagen
Abstract
The year 2017 marked the 50th anniversary of William J. Baumol’s seminal model of ‘unbalanced growth’, which predicts the so-called ‘Growth Disease’, i.e., the tendency of aggregate productivity growth to slow down in the process of tertiarisation. In an important contribution published in 2001, however, Nicholas Oulton showed that the shift of resources to the service sector may raise rather than lower aggregate productivity growth if the service industries produce intermediate rather than final products. While Oulton’s reasoning is logically consistent, the question arises whether it is also valid from an empirical point of view. We use 2011 and 2018 releases of EU KLEMS data to determine whether the shift of resources to services has raised or lowered aggregate productivity growth in the G7 countries.

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  • Hartwig, Jochen & Krämer, Hagen, 2019. "The ‘Growth Disease’ at 50 – Baumol after Oulton," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 463-471.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:streco:v:51:y:2019:i:c:p:463-471
    DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2019.02.006
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    1. Oulton, Nicholas, 2001. "Must the Growth Rate Decline? Baumol's Unbalanced Growth Revisited," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(4), pages 605-627, October.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Theo Santini & Ricardo Azevedo Araujo, 2021. "Productivity growth and sectoral interactions under Domar aggregation: a study for the Brazilian economy from 2000 to 2014," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 10(1), pages 1-30, December.
    3. Kritikos, Alexander S. & Schiersch, Alexander & Stiel, Caroline, 2021. "The Productivity Puzzle in Business Services," IZA Discussion Papers 14610, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Philip Flegler & Hagen Krämer, 2021. "Das Produktivitätsparadoxon der unternehmensbezogenen Dienstleistungen," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 74(03), pages 38-45, March.
    5. Jochen Hartwig, 2019. "Further insights into 'Baumol's disease' in Japan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(4), pages 2308-2316.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Baumol’s disease; Productivity growth; EU KLEMS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries

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