Accounting for Growth: Comparing China and India

Barry Bosworth and Susan M. Collins

No 12943, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We compare the recent economic performances of China and India using a simple growth accounting framework that produces estimates of the contribution of labor, capital, education, and total factor productivity for the three sectors of agriculture, industry, and services as well as for the aggregate economy. Our analysis incorporates recent data revisions in both countries and includes extensive discussion of the underlying data series. The growth accounts show a roughly equal division in each country between the contributions of capital accumulation and TFP to growth in output per worker over the period 1978-2004, and an acceleration of growth when the period is divided at 1993. However, the magnitude of output growth in China is roughly double that of India at the aggregate level, and also higher in each of the three sectors in both sub-periods. In China the post-1993 acceleration was concentrated mostly in industry, which contributed nearly 60 percent of China's aggregate productivity growth. In contrast, 45 percent of the growth in India in the second sub-period came in services. Reallocation of workers from agriculture to industry and services has contributed 1.2 percentage points to productivity growth in each country.

JEL-codes: F43 O1 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-eff and nep-tra
Note: IFM
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (90)

Published as Barry Bosworth & Susan M. Collins, 2008. "Accounting for Growth: Comparing China and India," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 45-66, Winter.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12943.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Accounting for Growth: Comparing China and India (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12943

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12943

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().