Productivity in endowments : sectoral evidence for Hong Kong's aggregate growth

The author provides sectoral evidence that sheds new light on the current debate regarding the sources of growth of the East Asian miracle. The author tests both the productivity-driven and endowment-driven hypotheses using Hong Kong's sectoral data. The results show that most of the growth in the services sector is driven by the rapidly accumulating capital endowments, and not by productivity growth. In addition, productivity growth in the manufacturing sector is also unimpressive. The manufacturing sector is more labor intensive and its growth is hindered by the reallocation of resources into the services sector as a result of the growth of capital endowments and imports. Overall, sectoral evidence supports the endowment-driven hypothesis for Hong Kong's aggregate growth.