@techreport{Caselli2004Poland,
abstract = {The authors revisit Western Europe?s record with labor ?productivity convergence and
tentatively extrapolate its implications for the future path of Eastern Europe. The poorer
Western European countries caught up with the richer ones through both higher rates of
physical capital accumulation and greater total factor productivity (TFP) gains. These
(relatively) high rates of capital accumulation and TFP growth reflect convergence along two
margins. One margin (between industries) is a massive reallocation of labor from agriculture to
manufacturing and services, which have higher capital intensity and use resources more
efficiently. The other margin (within industries) reflects capital deepening and technology
catch-up at the industry level. In Eastern Europe the employment share of agriculture is
typically quite large, and agriculture is particularly unproductive. Hence, there are potential
gains from sectoral reallocation. However, the between-industry component of the East?s
income gap is quite small. Hence, the East seems to have only one real margin to exploit: the
within-industry one. Coupled with the fact that within-industry productivity gaps are
enormous, this suggests that convergence will take a long time. On the positive side, however,
Eastern Europe already has levels of human capital similar to those of Western Europe. This is
good news because human capital gaps have proved very persistent in Western Europe?s
experience. Hence, Eastern Europe does start out without the handicap that is harder to
overcome.},
author = {Francesco Caselli and Silvana Tenreyro},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {O47; F43; F15; N10; O14; O11; 330; Entwicklungskonvergenz; Arbeitsproduktivit\"{a}t; Investition; Wirtschaftswachstum; Technischer Fortschritt; Strukturwandel; EU-Staaten; Spanien; Polen},
language = {eng},
number = {04,8},
title = {Is Poland the Next Spain?},
type = {Public policy discussion papers / Federal Reserve Bank of Boston},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/23454},
year = {2004}
}

