Capital Accumulation and Growth in Central Europe, 1920-2006

Central and Eastern Europe is a region with widely divergent development paths. Until World War II, these countries experienced comparable growth patterns. Whereas Austria and West Germany remained part of the capitalist West and underwent periods of rapid growth, other countries, under state socialist regimes, experienced, on average, far lower growth rates. The lack of data, however, often limits the possibilities of a detailed, quantitative analysis. In this paper, we use a new data set on physical and human capital in seven Central and East European countries for the period 1920-2006 to calculate their effect on economic growth. In addition, we analyze the effect of including the quality of education in human capital. This allows us to perform a growth accounting analysis with the several production factors for Central Europe between 1920 and the present. The difference in growth path across countries is partly explained by differences in technical efficiency.