Regional productivity growth and investments in public infrastructure: the case of Germany

Georg Licht and Helmut Seitz

No 93-10, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper examines whether the productivity growth in the West-German states is influenced by the provision of public infrastructure. Medium-term labour productivity growth and output growth varies a lot between German states. This differences are more pronounced during the eighties. The traditional total factor productivity shows a smaller difference than labour productivity. The regional differences in the productivity growth rates can only partly be attributed to the differences in factor input growth. We estimate a translog-cost-function for the period 1970-1988 for 11 German states using a three-equation fixed-effects panel data model. We show that there are important cost-saving effects that are associated with public services. Likewise, the demand for labour, and the private investment demand for structures and equipment is effected by public capital goods. Our estimates indicate that public capital formation encourages private investment. This effect is especially strong with respect to the private demand for structures. These results confirm that regional or urban economic growth can be forstered by the government by public investment.

JEL-codes: E6 H3 H4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/29432/1/256898782.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:zewdip:9310

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().