Aging and Economic Competitiveness in the Core of "North Euro-Zone"

The paper addresses the problem of aging from a topical perspective, namely its impact on labour productivity, one of the main sources of an economy's competitiveness. Labour resources tend to become a limited 'asset' in many European Union countries, even the most developed ones, like Germany or Italy, where the age structure of the population is changing towards an increase in the share of older persons. In this context, aging and its effects on the productivity of older workers can become a challenge for the countries that are trying to maintain their sustainable economic growth. Our article is founded on the success stories of some of the countries the most affected by aging, namely Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland, and has the main aim to investigate how productivity and the number of older workers influence sectoral competitiveness in the studied countries. The originality of the paper lies in the comparative perspective from which this phenomenon is investigated: the comparison between four developed economies that seem to have managed preserving a positive correlation between productivity and the aging workforce in recent years, with the main purpose to identify the driving factors of their long-term competitiveness and the comparison between economic sectors, in order to identify those who can be the sources of sustainable economic growth. Modern econometric analysis using Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and ARDL models based on panel data on five economic sectors and 19 years scientifically substantiates some solutions possibly to be adopted by other countries facing the same demographic challenges. More precisely, less labour intensive industries and young people involvement in innovative industries are some of the key competitiveness factors.