Update of the National Accounts: Part 5

In previous Notes for Discussion, we presented an aspirational annual target for growth in labor productivity. Greece should aim to improve annual growth in labor productivity to 1.5 percent a year, from an average of 0.4 percent a year over the last two decades. In parallel with the calculations for quarterly GDP and inflation, as measured by the GDP deflator, we can also interpolate a quarterly path for productivity growth from the annual assumptions of a gradual recovery that we had made before. Having a quarterly path is helpful, because this allows monitoring progress as the quarterly national accounts' updates become available from ELSTAT.

Figure 1 shows the preliminary approach to interpolating quarterly productivity developments from annual (projected) data. Thus, once again, the four quarters are consistent with the annual totals. The quarterly interpolation relies...