Sectoral Structure and Productivity in the EU: New Member States’ Adjustment to Structural Transformation

Abstract

Sectoral change, an elemental fixture of modern market economies, is aligned with economic development and consistent with proceedings germane to globalization processes. Analyses of economic structures and their dynamics, undertaken as early as the first half of the twentieth century (see Fisher, 1935; Clark, 1940; Fourastié, 1949), continue to capture the fervent interests of researchers from disparate parts of the globe. The past is witness to sectoral shifts, and their direct and indirect effects on productivity having been analysed from multiple angles and subjected to a myriad of methodological tests (for example, Baumol, 1967; Peneder, 2002; Havlik, 2004, 2007; Burda, 2006; Breitenfellner and Hildebrandt, 2006; Bachmann and Burda, 2008). In the main, research results confirm that processes of tertiarization, namely the sectoral structural shifting toward service-based economies, are being experienced by an increasingly wider geographical audience.