Growth potential and economic performance in Baden-Württemberg’s service sector - an analysis based on microeconomic data

The crisis of 2008/2009 harmed especially the manufacturing sector. According to this fact, the service sector became more and more important for economic policy as a stabilizing element. Also, an above-average growth potential is attributed to the tertiary sector, not least of all because of the ongoing tendency towards outsourcing divisions of companies. The relevant discussion is particularly interesting for Baden-Württemberg as being an area where the service sector, compared to the rest of Germany and to the rest of the world, still shows a below average share of increase of value and employment.

The current interest towards the service sector and its growth potential coincides with an important reform concerning service sector statistics. Recently, the “Strukturerhebung für Deutschland” for economic analysis delivered data from the firm level. With the corresponding microeconomic data of single service sector companies, research into the tertiary sector now can be done in much more detail than before, when the analysis was based on aggregated data.

In the first step, it will be examined how far the aggregated data in form of branch-related average values that were available so far portrayed suitable statistical “representatives”. Within another step of the project, the economic performance of Baden-Württemberg’s service sector is meant to be analyzed, especially in comparison to the federal level, where corresponding microeconomic data is now available, too.