This study, conducted by
Pranee Tinakorn and Chalongphop Susangkarn, was published in 1996, and covers the period
1977-90. It develops a set of growth accounts that cover the total economy and three broad
sectors of agriculture, industry and services. The study stands out for the detailed nature of the
adjustments that were made to incorporate changes in the quality of labor inputs, reflecting
changes in educational attainment, experience (age) and gender. In addition, the authors
developed a methodology for allocating proprietors’ incomes between capital and labor. This is
the most elaborate of the studies that have analyzed Thailand’s growth experience.
Over the period of 1977-90, GDP growth averaged 7.6 percent annually (see table 4).
They attribute 44 percent of that growth to increases in capital and land, 46 percent to growth in
the labor input (of which 20 percentage points were traced to quality improvements), and only 10
percent to a residual estimate of improvement in TFP. The results are significantly different