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Productivity and economic growth in Switzerland 1991–2006

Summary

In this paper, we analyse the sources of economic growth in Switzerland during the period 1991–2006. The results suggest that labour input and capital input contribute 0.52 pp and 0.57 pp, respectively, to the average annual GDP growth of 1.44%. The remaining 0.35 pp represent growth in multi-factor productivity which is calculated as a residual. The estimate of growth in multi-factor productivity is lower than in previous studies because our measure of labour input takes changes in labour quality into account. Changes in labour quality explain 0.39 pp of the 0.52 pp contribution from labour input.

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We thank Thomas Bolli, Ulrich Kohli and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions. The paper represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect those of the Swiss National Bank.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Rudolf, B., Zurlinden, M. Productivity and economic growth in Switzerland 1991–2006. Swiss J Economics Statistics 146, 577–600 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399328

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