Industry Level Analysis : The Way to Identify the Binding Constraints to Economic Growth
2005
Palmade, Vincent
There are many economic diagnostic tools available which are trying to identify the constraints to economic growth in a given country. Unfortunately these tools tend to provide inconclusive and often conflicting answers as to what the most important constraints are. Even more worrisome, they tend to overlook the many industry-specific policy and enforcement issues which, collectively, have been found to be the most important constraints to economic growth. This is the key finding from more than 10 years of economic research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). The MGI Country studies have been uniquely based on the in-depth analysis of a representative sample of industries where clear causality links could be established between factors in the firms' external environment and their behavior, in particular through the analysis of competitive dynamics. They showed in detail how industry-specific policy and enforcement issues were the main constraints to private investment and fair competition-the two drivers of productivity and thus economic growth. This finding implies that governments and international financial institutions should rely on in-depth industry level analysis to uncover product market competition issues and set reform priorities. These analyses should include the often overlooked but critically important domestic service sectors such as retail and housing construction.
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