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josu · 2015-02-20 · Original thread
Talking about thresholds like:

>The 2012 paper suggests that when private sector debt passes 100% of GDP, that point is reached. Another way of looking at the same topic is the proportion of workers employed by the finance sector. Once that proportion passes 3.9%, the effect on productivity growth turns negative.

Does not make any sense. Each economy is different, and the available data is probably not enough to give such accurate numbers.

>Ireland and Spain are cases in point. During the five years beginning 2005, Irish and Spanish financial sector employment grew at an average annual rate of 4.1% and 1.4% respectively; output per worker fell by 2.7% and 1.4% a year over the same period.

Using Spain as an example for "output per worker" is not a very good idea, they somehow broke productivity growth in 1994 and it's been stucked since then [1].

Productivity is affected by many factors, so conducting a ceteris paribus analysis is very complicated if not impossible. There is a really interesting book written by a journalist about productivity: The power of productivity [2]

[1] http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...,

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Productivity-Poverty-Stabili...

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