Structural shifts: impact on productivity and growth of Ukraine's economy

Abstract

The leading feature of the modern world has been the deep structural shifts caused by radical transformations of its industrial landscape. The corresponding transformations were caused by changes in the internal structure of national industrial sectors and were based on the technologies of the "fourth industrial revolution", whose emergence gave additional impetus to the structural transformation of the world economy, intensifying competition in global markets. The Covid crisis was a catalyst for accelerating changes in the intersectoral proportions of the world economy, complicating the existing structural problems. The study shows that the key feature of the model of structural changes that occurred in Ukraine's economy after the global financial crisis was the accelerated reduction of the industrial sector, especially the loss of potential of the processing industry, its technological simplification and narrowing the variety of industries. This was accompanied by increased dominance of the tertiary sector and the growth of the primary sector. Excessive share in the structure of production is occupied by industries, whose mode of reproduction is able to generate only relatively low rates of economic growth (mining and related industries of primary processing in industry and agriculture). Such a trend of structural shifts is not able to generate the necessary boost of economic growth, and much less so as it is burdened by the risks of deepening structural inconsistency of Ukraine’s economy with the cardinal changes taking place in the world economy. Comparison of parameters and trends of structural changes in Ukraine’s economy and in a comparable group of countries and the world as a whole shows that the changes in the structure of Ukraine’s economy were much higher, but did not create sufficient potential for sustainable economic growth. The author analyzes the gaps in labor productivity between economic activities and sectors of Ukraine’s economy, as well as changes in their dynamics, which leads to the conclusions about the relationship between the rates of technological development of different sectors of Ukraine’s economy and the gradual slowdown of the already imperfect technological development of this country’s industry with further loss of competitiveness. Estimated the degree of influence of such factors as investments and technological innovations, as well as shifts in the structure of employment on the increase of labor productivity in Ukraine’s economy. Using the apparatus of econometric modeling, the author evaluates the dependence of the dynamics of GDP growth on the change of the indices of the physical volume of GVA in the sectors of this country’s economy.