IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2512.19029.html

Backward Growth Accounting: An Economic Tool for Strategic Planning of Business Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Ali Zeytoon-Nejad

Abstract

Business growth is a goal of great importance for its both private and social benefits. Many firms view business growth as an imperative for their survival, stability, and long-term success. Business growth can be socially beneficial, too, as it enables businesses to expand into new territories where they can stimulate economic growth and development, creates more jobs, increase living standards, and better serve their communities by giving back more through Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. Business growth must be planned reasonably and optimally so that it can effectively achieve its critical ambitions in business practice. The current common practices for planning the supply side of business growth are usually ad-hoc and lack well-established mathematical and economic foundations. The present paper argues that business growth planning can be pursued more structurally, reliably, and meaningfully within the framework of Growth Accounting (GA), which was first introduced by Economics Nobel Laureate Robert Solow to study economic growth. It is shown that, although GA was initially put forth as a procedure to explain "economic growth" ex-post, it can similarly be used to plan "business growth" ex-ante when a general backward approach is taken in its procedure-called Backward Growth Accounting (BGA) in this paper. Taking this well-established economic-mathematical approach to planning business growth will enhance the current practices conceptually and structurally, as it is built on the basis of economic logic and mathematical tools. BGA can help businesses identify and plan for key drivers of output growth and assess shortcomings in the growth process, such as poor productivity, inadequate labor utilization, or insufficient capital investment. The paper outlines an eight-step procedure for planning business growth using BGA and includes appendices with real-world examples.

Suggested Citation

  • Ali Zeytoon-Nejad, 2025. "Backward Growth Accounting: An Economic Tool for Strategic Planning of Business Growth," Papers 2512.19029, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2512.19029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.19029
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. T. W. Swan, 1956. "ECONOMIC GROWTH and CAPITAL ACCUMULATION," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 334-361, November.
    2. Crafts, Nicholas, 2003. "Quantifying the contribution of technological change to economic growth in different eras: a review of the evidence," Economic History Working Papers 22350, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    3. Nicholas Crafts & Pieter Woltjer, 2021. "Growth Accounting In Economic History: Findings, Lessons And New Directions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 670-696, July.
    4. repec:ehl:lserod:22350 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Jim Lee, 2009. "Does Size Matter in Firm Performance? Evidence from US Public Firms," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 189-203.
    6. Robert M. Solow, 1956. "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 65-94.
    7. Waterman, Robert Jr. & Peters, Thomas J. & Phillips, Julien R., 1980. "Structure is not organization," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 14-26, June.
    8. Pan, Wenrong & Xie, Tao & Wang, Zhuwang & Ma, Lisha, 2022. "Digital economy: An innovation driver for total factor productivity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 303-311.
    9. Field, Alexander J., 2006. "Technological Change and U.S. Productivity Growth in the Interwar Years," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 203-236, March.
    10. Abramovitz, Moses, 1993. "The Search for the Sources of Growth: Areas of Ignorance, Old and New," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(2), pages 217-243, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ali Zeytoon‐Nejad, 2025. "Backward Growth Accounting: An Economic Tool for Strategic Planning of Business Growth," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 46(6), pages 3296-3317, September.
    2. Landon-Lane, John S. & Robertson, Peter E., 2009. "Long-run growth in the OECD: A test of the parallel growth paths hypothesis," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 346-355, July.
    3. Michael Peneder & Karl Aiginger & Gernot Hutschenreiter & Markus Marterbauer, 2001. "Structural Change and Economic Growth," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 20668.
    4. Johannes W. Fedderke & Yang Liu, 2017. "Schumpeterian and semi-endogenous productivity growth explanations," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 25(1), pages 111-137, January.
    5. Koopman, Eline & Wacker, Konstantin M., 2023. "Drivers of growth accelerations: What role for capital accumulation?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    6. Ekaterina Ponomareva & Alexandra Bozhechkova & Alexandr Knobel, 2012. "Factors of Economic Growth," Published Papers 172, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2013.
    7. Minea, Alexandru, 2008. "The Role of Public Spending in the Growth Theory Evolution," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 5(2), pages 99-120, June.
    8. Alessandro Bellocchi & Giuseppe Travaglini & Beatrice Vitali, 2023. "How capital intensity affects technical progress: An empirical analysis for 17 advanced economies," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(3), pages 606-631, July.
    9. James Bessen, 2008. "Accounting for Productivity Growth When Technical Change is Biased," Working Papers 0802, Research on Innovation.
    10. João Juchem Neto & Julio Claeyssen, 2015. "Capital-induced labor migration in a spatial Solow model," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 115(1), pages 25-47, May.
    11. Kawalec Paweł, 2020. "The dynamics of theories of economic growth: An impact of Unified Growth Theory," Economics and Business Review, Sciendo, vol. 6(2), pages 19-44, June.
    12. Mishra, Vinod & Smyth, Russell, 2014. "Convergence in energy consumption per capita among ASEAN countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 180-185.
    13. Khalifa Hassanain, 2015. "Special Drawing Right and Currency Risk Management," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 5(3), pages 780-785.
    14. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung - welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert des Wachstum?," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 144, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    15. Valentina Ciriotto & José Noguera-Santaella, 2023. "The Catching up in Steady State per Capita Income: Latin America and the Caribbean," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 51(1), pages 71-82, March.
    16. Filipa Correia & Philipp Erfruth & Julie Bryhn, 2018. "The 2030 Agenda: The roadmap to GlobALLizaton," Working Papers 156, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    17. George Halkos & Iacovos Psarianos, 2016. "Exploring the effect of including the environment in the neoclassical growth model," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 18(3), pages 339-358, July.
    18. Martina Vukašina & Ines Kersan-Škabiæ & Edvard Orliæ, 2022. "Impact of European structural and investment funds absorption on the regional development in the EU–12 (new member states)," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 17(4), pages 857-880, December.
    19. Sudip Ranjan Basu, 2005. "Correlating Growth with Well-Being during Economic Reforms Evidence from India and China," Development and Comp Systems 0509010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Liu, Tung & Li, Kui-Wai, 2006. "Disparity in factor contributions between coastal and inner provinces in post-reform China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 449-470.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2512.19029. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.