Introduction

Until recently, internationally comparable studies of the relationships between skill formation, investment, technological change and growth have been hampered by the lack of a readily available standard database covering a large set of countries. As a result, researchers had often to compile their own databases, making replication and comparability of studies difficult. In our analysis of European growth and productivity in Chapter 2 we made use of a new database which can serve as a useful tool for empirical and theoretical research in the area of economic growth: the EU KLEMS Growth Accounts database. This database includes measures of output and input growth and derived variables such as multi-factor productivity at the industry level. The input measures include various categories of capital (K), labour (L), energy (E), material (M) and service inputs (S). The measures are developed for twenty-five individual European Union member states, the United States and Japan and cover the period from 1970 to 2005. The variables are organised around the growth accounting methodology, a major advantage of which is that it is rooted in neo-classical production theory. It provides a clear conceptual framework within which the interactions among variables can be analysed in an internally consistent way.

The data series, publicly available on www.euklems.net, can be used by researchers employing growth accounting to consider sources of output and productivity growth in cross-country comparisons or studies of particular industries and different time periods, such as discussed in the previous chapters.