Sectoral Productivity Growth in Saudi Arabia

Journal Article

H., Alhoshan, . 2012

• Publication Online URL: Journal of Business and economics.
• Issue Number: 6
• Volume Number: 3
• Pages: 435 to 445

Publication Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyses the productivity growth performance of the different sectors of the Saudi economy.  In particular, this paper tries to look at the following questions:
(1) What does productivity growth performance look like in the different sectors of the economy? (2) What are the relative contribution labor and capital to sectoral growth?
(3) What policy suggestions could be made to enhance productivity growth and increase its role in the overall economic growth and diversification of the economic base of the Saudi economy?  
For this task, it estimated a CDS production function using different samples over the period 1995-2008.  The main findings are that TFP is significant and positive in most of the sectors considered.  Further, it varies between sectors, but in general it is in the range of 3% to 6%.    
In addition, the estimation results indicated that that growth of TFP contribution to output growth in these sectors growth is in general very low, and the sectoral output growth is dominated more by the growth of capital and labor inputs.