EU Competitiveness: The Critical Role of Intangible Assets in EU Labour Productivity Growth

Felix Roth () and Alessio Mitra

No 19, Hamburg Discussion Papers in International Economics from University of Hamburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: The European Union (EU) faces challenges such as an ageing population, migratory pressures, geopolitical vulnerabilities, and climate change, highlighting the need to enhance its ability to do more with less. This paper examines the drivers of EU labour productivity before and after the 2007 financial crisis, across goods and services sectors, tangible and intangible assets, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and non-ICT tangibles. Using the EUKLEMS 2022 dataset for 14 EU countries and the UK from 1995-2019 and growth regression analysis, we find that Research & Innovation (R&I) is crucial for productivity growth. Labour productivity in the goods sector benefits most from non-ICT tangible assets, while in the service sector, it benefits more from the non-R&D intangibles software, training, and organisational capital. On the other hand, training and ICT tangibles became more important drivers of labor productivity growth after the economic crisis. We argue that the productivity gap between the EU and the United States is largely due to insufficient investment in non-R&D intangibles like software, training, and organizational capital.

Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eff, nep-eur, nep-ict, nep-knm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/306282/1/hdpie-no19.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:uhhhdp:19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Hamburg Discussion Papers in International Economics from University of Hamburg, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().