The growth performance of countries proved to be very different during the recent crisis. We apply principal component analysis
to derive a single ordinal indicator on growth performance and to analyse whether initial conditions of economies or structural
characteristics can explain the differences in growth performance. As initial conditions at the start of the crisis we use
fiscal situation, trade competitiveness, output and credit growth, as structural characteristics we test size, openness, share
of sectors and per-capita income. The task has proved to be as difficult as expected as causality often works in two ways
and policy variables have intervened, which themselves are dependent on the initial conditions and structural characteristics.
The three indicators that end up as the best predictors for the depth of the crisis are correlated with one another and thus
difficult to disentangle.
Keywords:KP_Berichte_Analysen
Forschungsbereich:Industrie-, Innovations- und internationale Ökonomie