Pattern of Economic Growth and its Implication for Employment

Draft for comments Pattern of Economic Growth and its Implication for Employment By Rizwanul Islam1 Introduction While a number of countries of the developing world have witnessed significant progress in reducing poverty, the stubborn persistence of poverty remains a major challenge in many countries Progress in poverty reduction has been quite impressive in certain parts of Asia, e.g., in the countries of East and South East Asia (ESEA) But even in some of those countries, it has not been possible to sustain the rate of poverty reduction when they were hit by shocks like the economic crisis of 1997-98, the food crisis of 2008 and the global economic crisis that is currently (i.e., during 2008-09) unfolding On the other hand, in countries of South Asia, the rate of poverty reduction has been generally lower than that in countries of ESEA Countries of sub-Saharan Africa fare much worse in terms of poverty reduction, and are less likely than others to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction (viz., one of cutting poverty by half in 2015 compared to the level in 1990) Based on some projections (e.g., those by World Bank, 2003), it seems that the MDG of poverty reduction would be attained at the global level; but doubts remain about certain regions and countries If China is excluded from the global calculations, the percentage below the official poverty line of US$1 per capita per day for the rest of the world is projected to decline from 28.5 per cent in 1990 to 15.7 per cent in 2015 – The author is Special Adviser on Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction in the Employment Sector, International Labour Office, Geneva The views expressed in the paper not necessarily reflect those of the organization with which he is associated Assistance provided by Irmine Iroko in compiling the data presented in this paper is gratefully acknowledged The usual disclaimer applies thus remaining over half of the 1990 level And if one broadens the definition of poverty beyond income poverty to accommodate the multidimensional concept, the situation looks even less rosy The above background has led development practitioners and policy makers at various levels to look for all possible mechanisms for speeding up the rate of poverty reduction And productive employment is recognized as critical in that respect The experience of countries that succeeded in reducing poverty significantly and at high rates indicates the importance of sustained high rates of economic growth in achieving the result However, some recent studies (Islam, 2006b; Khan, 2001, and 2007) have come up with an equally important finding that high growth is not enough; the pattern and sources of growth and the manner in which its benefits are distributed are extremely important from the point of view of achieving the goal of poverty reduction There are country experiences demonstrating that there is no invariant relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction, and that variables relating to employment and labour markets are critical in determining the poverty reducing outcome of growth2 Empirical exercise based on cross-country data (Islam, 2006a) demonstrates that the employment intensity of economic growth has a significant influence on the rate of poverty reduction One important question in the context of the nexus (mentioned above) between economic growth, employment and poverty reduction is what is really meant by employment-intensive growth and whether such growth implies any compromise on productivity and efficiency through the adoption of primitive/outmoded technology Of course, technology is an important element influencing the quantity of See, for example, the country studies in Islam (2006b) and the chapter in that book summarising those experiences employment associated with a given amount of output, but not the only one The sector composition of output is also important in determining the employment outcome of growth Higher growth of sectors that are labour-intensive could lead to an increase in the employment intensity of growth Conceptually, employment intensity of economic growth (as measured by the elasticity of employment with respect to output) is inversely related to labour productivity However, if employment-intensive growth is achieved through higher growth of labour-intensive sectors, it would not necessarily imply sacrificing labour productivity altogether Indeed, it is possible to combine high elasticity of employment with some increase in labour productivity The basic objective of the present paper is to empirically test the proposition that countries where the pattern of growth was characterized by high growth of labourintensive sectors were the ones that achieved more employment-intensive growth Conversely, the countries where the pattern of growth does not exhibit such a character demonstrate lower employment intensity of growth The mirror image of the above relationship between the pattern and employment intensity of growth is the relative contribution of labour productivity and quantity of labour in output growth The countries which exhibit a lower contribution of labour productivity to output growth are the ones that are characterized by higher employment intensity of growth In quest of a pattern of growth that is conducive to a high rate of employment growth, the present paper would examine whether there are countries that exhibited high share of employment in output growth and yet were able to combine employment growth with growth in labour productivity The paper is organized as follows Section attempts to clarify some of the conceptual issues involved in the empirical exercises presented in the paper Section is devoted to an examination of the sector composition output in selected developing countries That would be done at broad sector levels as well as at the sub-sector level for the manufacturing sector The basic purpose of the empirical analysis of that section would be to examine if the experience of employment-intensive growth has a systematic relationship with the pattern of growth Section is devoted to an examination of the relative contribution of labour productivity and quantity of labour input to output growth The attempt there would be to see how countries with different degrees of employment intensity of growth have performed in terms of combining labour productivity and employment in achieving output growth Section of the paper presents a few concluding observations based on its empirical findings The Conceptual and Analytical Issues Involved 2.1 Measuring employment intensity of output growth through employment elasticity In order to measure the employment outcome of economic growth, a summary indicator is needed of the degree of employment growth that is associated with a given output growth The term employment intensity of growth is increasingly being used in that context A measure of the employment intensity of growth can be provided by the elasticity of employment with respect to output growth (which is often referred to as employment elasticity) Quantitative estimates of employment elasticity are based on the assumption that employment is primarily a function of output Based on this assumption, employment elasticity can be measured either arithmetically (i.e., by dividing the proportionate change in employment by the proportionate change in output during a given period) or by applying the econometric method of regression analysis where a functional relationship between employment and output is postulated and estimated But in many developing countries, available data on employment, especially for the informal segment of the economy, often does not reflect the real demand for labour In such economies, estimates of employment elasticity for the economy as a whole may not be very meaningful because a high figure may simply reflect the labour force taking refuge into low productivity employment of a residual character in the absence of unemployment benefits For such countries, the concept and its empirical estimates may be more meaningful with respect to formal sectors where the assumption of employment data reflecting the demand for labour labour may be more valid When defined in the manner described above, it can be shown that employment elasticity is inversely related to labour productivity, and an employment elasticity of greater than one implies a decline in labour productivity (Islam, 2006a; Kapsos, 2005) In order to allow for growth in labour productivity, employment growth must be lower than output growth, which in turn implies that employment elasticity has to be lower than unity Employment elasticity of a sector reflects two different elements: (i) the composition of the sector, and (ii) technology used in various lines of production within the sector3 So, even if there is no change in technology, employment elasticity may change if the composition of the sector changes because employment elasticity of a sector is the Osmani (2009) develops a methodology to decompose employment elasticity into the effects of these two factors weighted average of elasticities of the component sub-sectors (Khan, 2001) Take the case of the manufacturing sector If the more labour intensive components have a greater weight in the sector, the overall elasticity would be correspondingly higher than in a situation where more capital-intensive components dominate the manufacturing sector The same argument would apply for an economy as a whole If, for example, manufacturing and service sectors of the economy exhibit higher employment elasticity compared to agriculture, an increase in the weights of the former in the GDP would lead to a rise in the overall employment elasticity 2.2 The sectoral pattern of growth It follows from the above that if a country’s policy environment is such that its labourintensive industries (or sectors) have a greater incentive to grow at faster rates, it is quite possible for such industries (or sectors) to assume a greater weight in the manufacturing sector (or the economy as a whole) And hence, the overall employment elasticity for the manufacturing sector (or the economy) may rise without requiring any individual sub-sector (or sector) to adopt more labour-intensive technology than it is employing at present All that would be needed to achieve such a result would be to ensure that the policy environment is conducive to (or at least does not discriminate against) the growth of the relatively more labour-intensive subsectors The above discussion brings one to the issue of the sectoral pattern of economic growth and development strategies pursued by developing countries A couple of points may be made in this regard First, the historical experience of the present-day developed countries would show that in the course of their development they generally went through a particular pattern of structural change in their economies, viz., diminishing share of agriculture in GDP associated with, first, increasing share of industries followed by an increasing share of services Some of the late developers, especially some countries of ESEA (e.g., the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.), also followed very similar pattern Different economists have offered different explanations for the observed pattern of structural changes in an economy as mentioned above; notable amongst them are Fisher (1939), Clark (1951), Kuznets (1966, 1971) and Kaldor (1966, 1967) The major differences in their explanations lie in their relative emphasis on demand and supply side factors Fisher, Clark and Kuznets focus mainly on the demand side and base their arguments on changes in the income elasticity of demand for products and services of different categories They refer to the famous Engel’s law that income elasticity of demand for agricultural products is lower than that for manufactured goods Likewise, the income elasticity of demand for services is higher than that for manufactured goods Hence, with increases in incomes, demand for agricultural goods would decline and that for manufactured goods would increase When production responds to this pattern of changes in demand, the share of agriculture in GDP starts declining and that of industry starts increasing At some level of income, the income elasticity fo demand for services would exceed that for industrial goods, leading to rapid increases in the share of services in GDP At that point, the share of industry in GDP starts declining Kaldor brings in some supply side arguments in addition to the above mentioned demand factor According to him, agriculture is subject to diminishing returns to land (which is the major factor of production in that sector), and is thus unable to sustain its growth beyond a point Industry, on the other hand, is not subject to diminishing returns to its major factor, and does not face the same constraint as agriculture This, coupled with higher income elasticity of demand for industrial products, enables the industrial sector to act as the engine of growth And growth in that sector pulls overall GDP growth through linkage effects Moreover, as productivity, especially of labour, is usually higher in manufacturing, higher growth of that sector leads to higher productivity in the economy as a whole And unless the pattern of growth in that sector is very capital-intensive, it would absorb labour transferred from agriculture which normally has lower productivity Thus a process of growth starts which is associated with a gradual transfer of labour from low productivity sectors to higher productivity sectors4 Critical to the success of this process is the rate of growth of the manufacturing sector relative to that of agriculture and to that of the overall economy It is of course possible to criticise the demand-based explanation of structural change by bringing in the possibility of trade In an open economy, demand for manufactured goods could be met, at least partly, through imports Hence the manufacturing sector does not need to grow at the same rate as implied by the growth of demand for such goods However, when trade is introduced into the system, one has to also consider the possibility of exports And that would bring one to the second point concerning structural changes that could be envisaged for developing economies The nature of the trade regime can actually influence the pattern of industrialization in terms of its sector composition One prediction which follows from the standard theory of international trade is that greater trade openness should lead labour-abundant countries to specialize in the Islam (2006a) considers such transfer as the first stage in what he calls a “virtuous circle of growth”, and a major characteristic of pro-poor growth production and export of goods which intensively utilize their abundant factor, viz., labour5 Thus, greater openness should lead to high growth of labour-intensive industries; and as the weight of such industries in the overall sector increases, there should be a rise in the employment intensity of output in the manufacturing sector as a whole This process should continue until surplus labour gets exhausted and wage rates start rising, at which point employment elasticity may also start declining Neither Kaldor nor the earlier economists (e.g., Clark and Fisher) theorizing about structural changes in an economy mentioned anything about the composition of the manufacturing sector and its possible implication for employment But from the point of engendering a process of quick transfer of labour from low productivity agriculture to industry, it is important not only to have high growth of manufacturing but also to have high growth of employment in that sector That would be possible when labour intensive industries have a higher weight in the growth of the manufacturing sector Such a pattern of industrialization would, of course, depend on a variety of factors, e.g., the pattern of demand in the domestic as well as external market, the policy environment prevailing in an economy, etc 2.3 Employment-intensive growth and labour productivity6 Mention has already been made above of the inverse relationship between employment elasticity and labour productivity which implies the possibility of a tradeoff between employment growth and labour productivity In reality, however, this Data on India and Indonesia presented in Auer and Islam (2006) show the wide range of employment elasticity for various sub-sectors of manufacturing Various country studies in Islam (2006b) also show this The term labour productivity has been distinguished by A.R Khan (2002) from output per worker In the present paper, the term is used in the sense of output per worker trade-off does not have to be very serious One can see this easily if one remembers that in an accounting framework, both the quantity of labour input and labour productivity contribute to output growth Depending on the policies pursued, a country may be able to achieve a balanced contribution of both these elements towards output growth This proposition is explained further below For an economy as a whole, output is equal to the product of the labour force employed and labour productivity This can be expressed through the following identity: Y ≡ L × Y/L, (1) where Y and L stand respectively for output and employment For small changes, one can write the above as ΔY = ΔL + ΔY/L, (2) where Δ indicates growth rate Expression (2) implies that growth in output is the sum of the growth of employed labour force and growth of labour productivity Thus, both employment in quantitative terms and labour productivity can potentially contribute to output growth Indeed, if output growth is sufficiently high, there could be scope for substantial increases in both employment and productivity growth And that has been the experience of East and South East Asian economies like those of Rep of Korea, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, 10 manufacturing growth with respect to GDP growth On the whole, not only has overall economic growth been higher in the countries of ESEA (except Philippines) than in South Asia, the manufacturing sector has been the major driver of growth in the former It thus appears that only those countries were able to achieve a sectoral pattern of growth outlined by Kaldor (and others like Clark, Fisher and Kuznets as mentioned in section 2.2) Not surprisingly, they are also the countries that were able to achieve more employment intensive growth and Lewis type transformation of their labour markets _ albeit at varying speed7 In order to get further insight into the sectoral pattern of economic growth, it would be useful to look at the composition of the manufacturing sector Using UNIDO data (Indstat 3, 2005)8, an attempt has been made to rank sub-sectors of manufacturing industries (at the three-digit level) of various countries according to their capitallabour ratios Based on such rankings, five most labour-intensive and five most capital-intensive industries for each country were identified for 1980, 1990 and 2002 The shares of the five most labour-intensive and five most capital-intensive industries in total manufacturing value added were then calculated These shares are presented in Table The idea behind this exercise is to see whether there has been a systematic change in the sector composition of the manufacturing sector in either direction Data presented in Table point out a few interesting aspects of the sectoral pattern of industrialization in the selected countries of Asia First, both Rep of Korea and Malaysia show an increase in the share of labour intensive industries up to 1990 and a decline thereafter Korea also experienced a fall in the share of capital-intensive industries till 1990 and a rise thereafter In Malaysia, on the other hand, the share of See Islam (2008) for an analysis of that aspect A brief description of this data has been put in the appendix to this paper 12 such industries in 1990 was already higher than in 1980, although there was a slight decline after that The above figures indicate that while Korea provides a classic example of labour-intensive industrialization in its early phase of development, Malaysia comes close to that Thailand also witnessed a rise in the share of labour intensive industries between 1990 and 2002 In contrast, India witnessed a gradual decline in the share of labour intensive industries and a rise in the share of capitalintensive industries Pakistan and Sri Lanka also show similar trends, although not so clearly The figures for Bangladesh presented in Table need to be interpreted with caution They indicate a substantial rise in the shares of both top five labour-intensive and top five capital-intensive industries These figures themselves are not implausible, and might indicate growth taking place at two ends of the spectrum Indeed, there has been very rapid growth of one labour-intensive industry, viz., ready made garments, which may be reflected in the sharp increase in the share of the top five labourintensive industries It should, however, be noted that apart from this single industry, there has not been a similar growth in any other labour-intensive industry In fact, the performance of another major labour-intensive industry of the country, viz., leather and leather products has been rather disappointing, resulting in a decline in its share in total manufacturing value added (Ahmed, et al., 2008) In the case of India, data from national sources (viz., the Annual Survey of Industries) corroborate the findings based on UNIDO data Using the ASI data, one recent study (Palit, 2008) concludes that the composition of Indian manufacturing has not undergone very substantive changes during the 1990s That study actually shows that the overall share of the labour-intensive industries in total manufacturing output has 13 declined significantly between 1990-91 and 2003-04 In 1990-91, the top five labourintensive industries (viz food and other food products, beverages and tobacco, wood products and furniture, other textiles, leather and fur products) accounted for nearly 41% of manufacturing output In 2003-04, the share of the top five (which in that year were other textiles, leather and fur, beverages and tobacco, food products, and other manufacturing) dropped to 28.32% (Palit, 2008) On the whole, data on the sector composition of the manufacturing sector clearly demonstrates that it is the countries of ESEA (with the exceptions of Indonesia and the Philippines) that were able to achieve a structural change towards labour-intensive industries during the early phases of their development when they had surplus labour Countries of South Asia have not been able to achieve that This is quite striking as far as India is concerned because that country marked a significant change in the strategy of development since 1991 when far-reaching reforms were introduced in the areas of both domestic economic policies and trade policies And that implies that trade liberalization alone does not automatically enable a country to attain labour-intensive industrialization There are other factors that influence the policy environment and hence the pattern of industrialization of a particular country that need to be addressed if a country intends to embark on a process of development that would rapidly absorb its surplus labour in productive employment9 Contribution of Labour Productivity and Employment to Output Growth The pattern of economic development that unfolded in the countries of ESEA has been widely debated But that debate focused mainly on the relative contribution of For example, on India, Chandrasekhar (2008) finds that various elements in the policy environment in India which made capital artificially cheaper and encouraged capital deepening as well as the growth of capital-intensive industries On Bangladesh, Ahmed, et al (2008) pointed out a number of sectorspecific factors that are responsible for slow growth of labour-intensive industries 14 capital accumulation and total factor productivity (the latter being used as an indicator disembodied technological progress) in explaining the impressive growth performance of those countries While the well-known World Bank study of 1993 (World Bank, 1993) argued that East Asia’s superior economic performance was mainly caused by rapid technological progress, there are many (especially, Kim and Lau, 1994, Krugman, 1994, and Young, 1995) who challenged this view and argued (on the basis of alternative empirical analysis) that the contribution of total factor productivity (TFP) growth to East Asia’s labour productivity growth has been relatively small10 From the point of view of the impact of the pattern of growth on employment and the possibility of a trade-off between productivity and employment, it is important to identify the relative contribution of labour productivity and the quantity of labour input to output growth Storm and Naastepad (2005) did that for some countries of the ESEA region and came to the conclusion that “labour productivity growth has been the major source of East Asian per capita income growth” (p.1062) However, in an empirical analysis (using cross-country data on 24 developing countries) of the relationship between labour productivity growth and employment growth, they find East Asian countries to be “outliers” And on the basis of that, they conclude that “East Asia managed to escape the trade-off between labour productivity growth and employment growth” The apparent contradiction between these two sets of findings could probably be explained by the employment creating effect of labour productivity growth exceeding the employment displacing effect Be that as it may, it appears from Storm and Naastepad (2005) that the pattern of growth in East Asia enabled them to 10 Khan (2002) appears to take the view that TFP was an important source of growth for the countries of East Asia 15 combine high growth of employment and productivity How the countries of South Asia compare with those of ESEA in this respect? In order to address the above question, decomposition of output growth (both total GDP and manufacturing output) into contributions by employment and productivity growth has been carried out using the methodology outlined in section 2.3, and the results are presented in Tables 3a, 3b, and Although these results not indicate any clear pattern, a number of interesting conclusions can be drawn, at least tentatively The first observation (and an important one from the point of view of trade-off between employment and labour productivity growth) that can be made on the basis of Tables 3a and 3b is that during the 1980s and 1990s, the contribution of labour productivity growth to GDP growth in Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand left sufficient scope for employment to increase That, combined with the high rates of GDP growth achieved by them, meant that they were able to combine fairly high rates of employment growth with substantial growth in labour productivity In other words, it was not only employment growth but growth of productive employment that was achieved by those countries Second, when one compares the countries of South and South East Asia, one does not find a systematic difference (although one would expect the contribution of labour productivity growth to be lower in the former) The figures for India, for example, especially for 1990-96 and 2000-06, are not much different from those of Korea _ although given the levels of development and the labour market situation in the two countries, one would expect the figures for Korea to be substantially higher Likewise, during the 1980s, the contribution of productivity growth in Pakistan and Sri Lanka was higher than in countries like Malaysia and Thailand Quite naturally, growth in the latter countries was more employment-intensive than in the former 16 Third, when one looks at the trend over time, some figures not appear to be consistent with what one would expect For example, the contribution of labour productivity growth to GDP growth increased over time in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia but not in Korea The increase in the contribution of labour productivity growth in Bangladesh, China and India is rather unexpected, given that those countries are still far away from experiencing a tight labour market That, in turn, indicates that the pattern of industrial growth in these countries has not been conducive to generation of productive employment for the large amount of surplus labour that is available in those countries Concluding Observations The present paper argues that the pattern of economic growth in terms of the sector and sub-sector composition of output is important in determining the employment outcome of growth Extending Kaldor’s analysis of economic growth where sustained economic growth requires a high rate of growth of manufacturing in relation to overall GDP growth and growth of other sectors, the present paper argues that such growth may also be conducive to a high rate of employment growth High rate of growth of manufacturing at the initial stage of development is necessary for creating conditions for Lewis-type transfer of surplus labour from sectors characterized by low labour productivity to those with higher productivity However, for that process to succeed, it is also important for more labour-intensive sub-sectors of manufacturing to grow at high rates _ at least at the initial stages of development It is empirically demonstrated that a few countries of East and South East Asia (especially, Rep of Korea and Malaysia, and Indonesia and Thailand, to some extent) 17 were able to achieve the kind of growth pattern mentioned above In general, the countries of ESEA not only had higher growth manufacturing in relation to overall GDP growth, the sector composition of the manufacturing sector was also more labour-intensive (at least during the initial stages of their growth) than in countries of South Asia As a result, the employment intensity of growth during the initial stages of their development was also higher than in the latter The paper also addresses the issue of possible trade-off between employment growth and labour productivity Even from the point of view of growth accounting, it is pointed out that depending on the pattern of growth, it should be possible to achieve a balance between employment and productivity growth By undertaking a decomposition exercise for overall GDP growth and manufacturing output growth, it is demonstrated that the countries of ESEA have been able to achieve a more balanced growth of employment and labour productivity than those of South Asia The difference in this result can also be ascribed to differences in the pattern of economic growth In that respect, it is argued that trade liberalization by itself is not adequate for bringing about a change in the pattern of growth that is in line with the comparative advantage of a country Other policies, by distorting the incentive structure in an economy may militate against the outcome that is expected from the pursuit of an open economy regime 18 Table 1: Growth rate of overall GDP and manufacturing output (annual compound rate of growth in percentage) Notes: Sources: Man: Manufacturing output Em: Elasticity of manufacturing growth with respect to GDP growth World Bank, WDI 1998, 2004, 2007, WDR 1978, 1995 19 Table 2: Share of the Five Most Labour-Intensive and Five Most Capital-Intensive Industries in Total Manufacturing Value Added in Asia Countries Bangladesh India Indonesia Share of the labour-intensive 1980 1990 2002 1.78 12.36 22.54(2) 9.47 4.01 5.21(4) 30.90 18.34 3.91 Share of the Capital-intensive 1980 1990 2002 3.09 8.74 32.35(2) 21.76 25.01 26.48(4) 14.61 18.02 17.21 Korea, Republic of 8.26 9.53 4.21(4) 22.64 10.10 28.18(4) Malaysia Pakistan Philippines Sri Lanka Thailand 4.09 15.79 7.20 22.99 n.a 12.21 4.14(1) 8.80 4.42 4.77 5.27(4) 3.62(5) 7.89(2) 23.25(3) 14.34(6) 9.37 21.69 23.58 5.28 n.a 18.25 11.61(1) 21.50 10.96 17.06 20.93(4) 24.51(5) 23.01(2) 12.57(3) 20.07(6) Notes: (1) 1991 (2) 1997 (3) 2000 (4) 2001 (5) 1996 (6) 1994 Source: Calculated from UNIDO, Indstat3, 2005 20 Table a: Decomposition of GDP Growth into Productivity and Employment Growth (South Asia) Countries Growth rate of GDP GDP growth due to employment growth GDP growth due to productivity growth 1980199020001980-1990 1990-2000 2000-2006 1980-1990 1990-2000 2000-2006 1990 2000 2006 Bangladesh 3.84 4.80 5.65 2.69 2.09 2.27 1.15 2.71 3.37 India 5.59 5.46 7.35 2.60 1.87 2.52 3.00 3.59 4.83 Pakistan 6.29 4.43 5.45 2.25 2.01 4.10 4.04 2.42 1.35 Sri Lanka 4.33 5.24 4.50 1.53 2.29 2.02 2.80 2.96 2.48 Source: Author's calculations by using data available from http://www.conference-board.org/economics/downloads/flat_file_08l.xls Contribution of productivity growth to GDP growth (%) 1980199020001990 2000 2006 29.97 56.40 59.77 53.60 65.82 65.75 64.19 54.64 24.82 64.60 56.39 55.15 Table 3b: Decomposition of GDP Growth into Productivity and Employment Growth (East and South East Asia) Growth rate of GDP Countries GDP growth due to employment growth GDP growth due to productivity growth 19801980-90 1990-96 2000-06 1980-90 1990-96 2000-06 90 1990-96 2000-06 China 7.39 8.79 11.56 2.85 1.11 1.00 4.54 7.68 10.56 Indonesia 5.04 7.83 4.86 3.97 2.09 0.97 1.07 5.74 3.88 Malaysia 5.96 9.56 4.91 3.34 3.96 1.75 2.62 5.60 3.16 Philippines 1.69 2.77 4.63 2.99 3.40 3.13 -1.30 -0.63 1.51 South Korea 9.05 7.68 4.63 2.88 2.44 1.53 6.17 5.23 3.10 Taiwan 6.71 7.08 3.49 2.42 1.54 1.07 4.29 5.54 2.42 Thailand 7.85 8.16 5.09 2.94 0.56 2.24 4.90 7.60 2.85 Source: Author's calculations by using data available from http://www.conference-board.org/economics/downloads/flat_file_08l.xls Access to that website is through http://www.ggdc.net Contribution of Productivity Growth to GDP Growth 1980-90 61.48 21.20 43.95 -77.19 68.16 63.97 62.48 1990-96 87.37 73.34 58.55 -22.67 68.19 78.27 93.11 21 2000-06 91.35 79.94 64.34 32.53 66.99 69.42 55.96 Table 4: Decomposition of Manufacturing Value Added Growth into Productivity and Employment Growth Countries Value Added Growth Value added growth due to employment growth 1980-1989 1990-2002 1980-1989 Bangladesh 8.21 14.57 5.51 India 7.10 6.36 -0.09 Indonesia 16.57 4.17 10.18 Korea, 10.20 7.12 5.52 Republic of Malaysia 9.23 10.00 1.96 Pakistan 8.54 2.20 2.14 Philippines -1.20 4.64 -1.95 Sri Lanka 5.45 6.05 1.80 Thailand 5.30 -0.13 1.92 Source: Calculated from UNIDO, Indstat 3, 2005 Value added growth due to productivity growth Contribution of Productivity Growth to value added Growth (%) 1980-1989 9.38 0.57 2.95 1990-2002 2.70 7.19 6.39 1990-2002 5.19 5.79 1.21 1980-1989 32.88 101.32 38.55 1990-2002 35.59 91.00 29.13 -1.62 4.68 8.74 45.91 122.81 4.58 -1.10 -0.61 5.27 8.54 7.27 6.41 0.74 3.65 3.38 5.43 3.30 5.26 0.78 -8.67 78.79 74.99 -61.90 67.01 63.72 54.24 149.81 113.23 12.95 6495.95 22 Appendix: A Brief Description of the Data Used UNIDO data UNIDO brings out industrial statistics on a periodic basis; “Indstat rev 2” brought out in 2005 is the latest available in that series Data pertaining to manufacturing industries classified at the three-digit level of ISIC are presented by country, industry and year Following items are covered by this data set: number of establishments, employment, wages and salaries, output, value added, gross fixed capital formation, number of female employees, and index number of industrial production The data cover 28 industries The period covered ends in 2003, but the latest year for most of the data is 2002 Moreover, the coverage differs across countries and variables; and there are important gaps for a number of countries While data from the OECD member countries are first collected by OECD and then provided to the UNIDO, data for non-OECD countries are collected by the UNIDO directly from the national statistical offices of the respective countries The data are originally stored national currency values at current prices The system allows conversion of values from national currency into US Dollars using the average period exchange rates as given in the International Financial Statistics For purposes of the present paper, all values (both value added and values of fixed assets have been converted into constant prices by using a deflator for the manufacturing sector calculated from data available in World Development Indicators (online) 23 2.Data used for decomposition of GDP Data used in Tables 3a and 3b for decomposing GDP growth into productivity and employment growth has been obtained from the database provided by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre and the Conference Board That database which covers 125 countries of the world is available online at http://www.ggdc.net The data included in that database are compiled from a variety of well-known international sources, e.g., the World Bank, the regional development banks (like the Asian Development Bank), and the International 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Decomposition of GDP Growth into Productivity and Employment Growth (East and South East Asia) Growth rate of GDP Countries GDP growth due to employment growth GDP growth due to productivity growth