Decomposing and Analyzing Korea’s Declining GDP Growth: Some Cautions and Suggestions

Chin Hee Hahn and Sukha Shin (2007) have developed new decompositions of Korean economic growth from 1990 to 2004. They find that Korea’s declining GDP growth has been accompanied by a sharp decline in capital deepening and an increase in total factor productivity. By contrast, Jorgenson and Vu’s (2007) decompositions of Korea’s GDP growth find that total factor productivity decreased over this period. This paper compares the two decompositions; evaluates Hahn and Shin’s hypothesis that competition from Chinese imports may be driving the decline in GDP growth; and briefly presents four other candidates (decline in Korean savings, business cycle effects, weak IT investment, and regulatory and wealth redistribution initiatives) that could be partially responsible for the slowdown in Korean GDP growth.