The German Productivity Paradox - Facts and Explanations

Steffen Elstner, Lars Feld and Christoph Schmidt

No 7231, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Despite massive digitization efforts, the German economy has experienced a marked slowdown in its productivity growth. This paper analyzes the reasons behind this disconcerting development. A major factor is the turnaround of the labor market that commenced around 2005. The successful integration of five million predominantly low-productivity workers into the labor market induced an attenuating effect on productivity growth. This does not explain the slowdown entirely, however. As a potentially important countervailing force, technological advances associated with digitization would have had the potential to lift productivity growth more strongly, but they frequently translated into employment growth instead.

Keywords: labor productivity; labor markets; technology shocks; digitalization; structural VARs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E24 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Working Paper: The German productivity paradox: Facts and explanations (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7231

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