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Background: The purpose of this article is to analyze economic growth, productivity and its determinants in five countries in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) during the period 1990-2010. This analysis applies to the aggregate economy as well as to nine economic sectors. Methods: A new database, LA-KLEMS, is used that will serve as a fundamental tool for empirical and theoretical research in the area of economic growth and productivity for Latin America. The variables are organized around the growth accounting methodology, which provides a clear conceptual framework for consistent analysis of interaction between the variables. The LA-KLEMS figures highlight discrepancies between countries and give a new perspective to understand how the series evolve over time. Results: Results show that the sluggish economic growth is basically driven by the negative contribution of total factor productivity (TFP) in all countries and in almost all sectors, despite the investment efforts made in the last 20 years. Latin American countries face a genuine problem of productivity, as the shift-share analysis shows.

This article provides estimates of gross and net fixed capital stock for six Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela for 1950–89. The capital stocks have been generated using the perpetual inventory method. To use the perpetual inventory method, historical time series of gross fixed investment, broken down into machinery and equipment, residential and non‐residential structures were estimated. The diskette accompanying the article contains a detailed description of the sources and series used and for each country, long‐term series (1900–89) of GDP at constant 1980 national prices, GDP at constant 1980 international dollars, population, GDP per capita and gross total and disaggregated investment in national currencies and as a percentage of GDP. The diskette also contains a complete set of net and gross capital stock estimates, average ages, average service life and capital‐output ratios for 1950–89 each in national currencies and international dollars. The findings show rising capital‐output ratios in most countries, except for Chile, where it remains more or less constant, and Colombia, where the ratio falls.

This paper provides an assessment of Latin America's long‐run performance from a comparative and historical perspective and concentrates on quantification of long‐run GDP growth and measurement of factor inputs and total factor productivity (TFP). Growth accounting shows the contribution of factor inputs (capital and labor) and TFP to output growth. What is new: capital and labor services are estimated for a group of nine countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and we widen the time frame of analysis to 1820–2016. This kind of exercise may serve different purposes such as explaining differences in growth rates between countries and assessing the role of technical progress. The overall GDP growth rate of the Latin American economies over the 1820–2016 period was somewhat above 3%. In the long run, the main differences in factor contributions to growth can be found in capital and, especially, in TFP. Capital contributed on average 1.45% to GDP growth over the whole period. However, the main culprit of the mediocre performance of Latin America compared to other developed and developing countries is TFP. TFP contributed over the whole period a mere 0.25% to Latin American GDP growth and was negative in several subperiods.

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