Capital quality improvement and the sources of economic growth in the euro area

Plutarchos Sakellaris and Focco Vijselaar

Economic Policy, 2005, vol. 20, issue 42, pages 267-306

Abstract: "Europe's growth slowed in the 1990s, reinforcing the overall impression of a need to catch up with the US regarding standards of living. In reaction, EU leaders adopted the famous Lisbon Agenda in 2000. The Agenda is now under review, the aim being to determine why progress on its pro-growth goals has been unsatisfactory and what can be done about it. The first crucial step in this process is to understand the true sources of the European growth slowdown. Sources-of-growth calculations have always been imprecise, but evidence from the US suggests that 'quality upgrading'- especially in capital goods - has substantially worsened the precision problem since the 1990s. Unfortunately, quality adjusted sources-of-growth calculations, however, have not performed satisfactorily for Europe, so Europe's leaders are working with potentially misleading accounts of Europe's growth slowdown. Redressing this omission is the goal of this paper." Copyright © CEPR, CES, MSH, 2005.

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