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Speech
Economic erowth and monetary policy: Is there a new normal?
The George Washington University and Princeton University's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies Philadelphia, PA President Charles Plosser gives his views on the debate about a new normal for economic growth in the U.S. economy. He will also discuss the question of future productivity growth and highlight research in this area.
Working Paper
The Increasing Deflationary Influence of Consumer Digital Access Services
Consumer digital access services—internet, mobile phone, cable TV, and streaming—accounted for over 2 percent of U.S. household consumption in 2018. We construct prices for these services using direct measures of volume (data transmitted, talk time, and hours of programming). Our price index fell 12 percent per year from 1988 to 2018 while official prices moved up modestly. Using our digital services index, we estimate total personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices have risen nearly 1/2 percentage point slower than the official index since 2008. Importantly, the spread between ...
Working Paper
Idea Diffusion and Property Rights
We study the innovation and diffusion of technology at the industry level. We derive the full dynamic paths of an industry’s evolution, from birth to its maturity, and we characterize the impact of diffusion on the incentive to innovate. The model implies that protection of innovators should be only partial due to the congestion externality in meetings in which idea transfers take place. We fit the model to the early experiences of the automobile and personal computer industries both of which show an S-shaped growth of the number of firms.
Working Paper
The Increasing Deflationary Influence of Consumer Digital Access Services
Consumer digital access services—internet, mobile phone, cable TV, and streaming—accounted for over 2 percent of U.S. household consumption in 2018. We construct prices for these services using direct measures of volume (data transmitted, talk time, and hours of programming). Our price index fell 12 percent per year from 1988 to 2018 while official prices moved up modestly. Using our digital services index, we estimate total personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices have risen nearly 1/2 percentage point slower than the official index since 2008. Importantly, the spread between ...
Working Paper
Technology Innovation and Diffusion as Sources of Output and Asset Price Fluctuations
We develop a model in which innovations in an economy's growth potential are an important driving force of the business cycle. The frame- work shares the emphasis of the recent ?new shock? literature on revisions of beliefs about the future as a source of fluctuations, but differs by tieing these beliefs to fundamentals of the evolution of the technology frontier. An important feature of the model is that the process of moving to the frontier involves costly technology adoption. In this way, news of improved growth potential has a positive effect on current hours. As we show, the model also ...
Speech
The new normal for the U.S. economy
President Patrick T. Harker gives opening remarks at the Bank?s 2015 Policy Forum: The New Normal for the U.S. Economy. He highlights how technology/innovation, social issues, and monetary policy all have important implications for policy over the long term. He also shares his own policy perspectives.
Working Paper
Comparative Advantage in Innovation and Production
This paper develops a multi-country, general equilibrium, semi endogenous growth model of innovation and trade in which specialization in innovation and production are jointly determined. The distinctive element of the model is the ability of the agents to direct their research efforts to specific goods, in a context of heterogeneous innovation capabilities across countries and contemporaneous decreasing returns to R&D. The model features a two-way relationship between trade and technology absent in standard quantitative Ricardian trade models. I calibrate the model using a sample of 29 ...
Journal Article
Venture capital in the Philadelphia metro area
Many consider venture capital to be a barometer of innovation and economic growth. It is an important source of capital for startups that banks deem too risky to finance. Therefore, it would be useful to examine how the venture capital industry has fared during the recent recession. This report focuses on the Philadelphia metro area and how it compares with the nation. In particular, it highlights the fact that the area increased its share of the nation?s biotechnology deals during the recession.
Analyzing the Impact of Programming Skills on Career Outcomes of Software Engineers
The most asked question in any computer science forum is “Which programming language is the best?.” Searching this question on Google yields more than 8 billion results. Reddit alone shows over 19 million results. Another way to ask this question is: Which programming language leads to better career outcomes?
Briefing
Networks, Innovation and Productivity: A Conference Recap
How do employment targets affect firm dynamics? What is the relationship between inventor migration, and local productivity and knowledge spillovers? How are surplus gains from inventions distributed? These were among the questions addressed by economists during a recent Richmond Fed research conference.Economists from the Richmond Fed, research universities and other institutions met in Richmond for a conference in May. Researchers presented papers on a variety of topics, including digital advertising, R&D allocation, production networks, and knowledge creation and diffusion.