The paper seeks to analyze the sector productivity in Chile during the period 1986-2008, thus analyzing the existence of behavioral patterns between productive sectors and the country’s aggregate economy. This being said, the author argues that sector productivity has been studied partially in Chile, primarily because of lack of data. Consequently, the research seeks to shed light on this issue by evaluating nine major sectors of the economy, hence establishing recent productivity developments at aggregate level. To achieve these objectives, the researcher introduced data provided by the Annual National Industrial Survey (ENIA).

The document is organized as follows. After a brief introduction, the second section sheds light on the concepts of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and labor productivity, whilst the third section describes the composition of GDP and the rate of productivity growth in different productive sectors of Chile. Chapter four focuses on the possible structural breaks in labor productivity at both aggregate and sector levels, whereas the fifth section discusses each of the components of labor productivity and how they relate to labor productivity in Chile. Finally, the sixth chapter offers some conclusions.

To conclude, the author argues that labor productivity in Chile has suffered several setbacks, especially during the period 1997-2008. Such behavior is highly correlated with the decline in TFP.

The document is available in Spanish