Cyclical Adjustment, Capital-labor Substitution and Total Factor Productivity Convergence – East Germany After Unification

Summary Despite rapid economic integration and massive help from the Federal Government East German productivity catching up faded out in the nineties. This paper presents panel-data estimates of the productivity adjustment based on a production function framework and a stylized adjustment model of the economy. The central empirical result is a decomposition of the sources of productivity growth. The estimates reveal that a large part of productivity growth in the early nineties is related to factors that were specific for that period. The fading out since the mid-nineties is attributed to the development of total factor productivity.