Abstract
This paper reviews the sources of the acceleration of economic growth in the Netherlands since the early 1980s. In particular the paper focuses on the downside of this growth acceleration, which is the slowdown in productivity growth. We argue that transitory shifts towards a greater share of lower productive employees and lower productive (service) sectors do not provide a full explanation. Hence we investigate to what extent the productivity growth slowdown can be explained from a slow diffusion of technology. Again we find only limited evidence for this hypothesis. We argue that human capital creation and structural reforms in labour and product markets are key elements to exploit the potential for a productivity acceleration in particular in services.
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van Ark, B., de Haan, J. (2000). Productivity, Income and Technological Change in the Netherlands: Causes and Explanations of Divergent Trends. In: van Ark, B., Kuipers, S.K., Kuper, G.H. (eds) Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3161-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3161-3_6
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