Growth Accounting - Example

Example

As an abstract example consider an economy whose total output (GDP) grows at 3% per year. Over the same period its capital stock grows at 6% per year and its labor force by 1%. The contribution of the growth rate of capital to output is equal to that growth rate weighted by the share of capital in total output and the contribution of labor is given by the growth rate of labor weighted by labor's share in income. If capital's share in output is 1/3, then labor's share is 2/3 (assuming these are the only two factors of production). This means that the portion of growth in output which is due to changes in factors is .06*(1/3)+.01*(2/3)=.027 or 2.7%. This means that there is still 0.3% of the growth in output that cannot be accounted for. This remainder is the increase in the productivity of factors that happened over the period, or the measure of technological progress during this time.

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