The sources of economic growth and relative backwardness in the Central Eastern European countries between 1995 and 2007

This article investigates the sources of economic growth and relative backwardness in 10 Central Eastern European (CEE) post-socialist countries between 1995 and 2007. It executes both growth accounting and development accounting for the CEE countries. The results show the primary source of economic growth was the accumulation of physical capital in the period investigated, followed by the growth of multifactor productivity. The contribution of labour was marginal in most cases. These growth accounting results are consistent with those of development accounting, which show that substantial backwardness (compared with Germany) prevailed only in capital intensity and multifactor productivity in the 10 CEE countries. Beyond the empirics of the growth path of the CEE countries, this study also contributes from a methodological standpoint by providing a thorough overview of the possible techniques of initial capital stock estimation.