Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 11.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Labor productivity: structural change and cyclical dynamics
A longstanding puzzle of empirical economics is that average labor productivity declines during recessions and increases during booms. This paper provides a framework to assess the empirical importance of competing hypotheses for explaining the observed procyclicality. For each competing hypothesis we derive the implications for cyclical productivity conditional on expectations of future demand and supply conditions. The novelty of the paper is that we exploit the tremendous heterogeneity in long-run structural changes across individual plants to identify the short-run sources of procyclical ...
Working Paper
Joint seasonal adjustment of economic time series
Working Paper
A consistent accounting of U.S. productivity growth
This paper is an exploration in the relative performance and sources of productivity growth of U.S. private businesses across industries and legal structure. In order to assemble the disparate data from various sources to develop a coherent productivity database, we developed a general system to manage data. The paper describes this system and then applies it by building such a database. The paper presents updated estimates of gross output, intermediate input use, and value added using the BEA's GPO data set. It supplements these data with estimates of missing data on intermediate input use ...
Working Paper
Sectoral productivity in the United States: recent developments and the role of IT
This paper introduces new estimates of recent productivity developments in the United States, using an appropriate theoretical framework for aggregating industry MFP to sectors and the total economy. Our work sheds light on the sources of the continued strong performance of U.S. productivity since 2000. We find that the major sectoral players in the late 1990s pickup were not contributors to the more recent surge in productivity. Rather, striking gains in MFP in the finance and business service sector, a resurgence in MFP growth in the industrial sector, and an end to drops elsewhere more ...
Working Paper
Sourcing externalities
Working Paper
Downsizing and productivity growth: myth or reality?
Working Paper
Integrating expenditure and income data: what to do with the statistical discrepancy?
The purpose of this paper is to build consistent, integrated datasets to investigate whether various disaggregated data can shed light on the possible sources of the statistical discrepancy. Our strategy is first to use disaggregated data to estimate consistent sets of input-output models that sum to either GDP or GDI and compare the two in order to see where the discrepancy resides. We find a few "problem" industries that appear to explain most of the statistical discrepancy. Second, we explore what combination of the expenditure data and the income data seem to produce the most sensible ...
Working Paper
Federally sponsored R&D and productivity growth