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We study the effects of aggregate government spending shocks in a production network economy where sectors differ in their price rigidity, factor intensities, use of intermediate inputs, and contribution to final demand. The model implies an aggregate value-added multiplier that is 75 percent (and $0.32) larger than that obtained in the average one-sector economy. This amplification is mainly driven by input–output linkages and—to a lesser extent—sectoral heterogeneity in price rigidity. Aggregate government spending shocks also lead to heterogeneous responses of sectoral value added, which are larger among upstream industries. We present novel empirical evidence supporting this prediction. (JEL E12, E16, E23, E43, E52, E62, H50)

This paper studies how the variation in sectoral productivities shapes the sectoral composition of the Spanish economy from 1980 to 2015. I first document an asymmetric behavior of sectoral productivities: the productivity of services declines over time, whereas the productivity of manufacturing increases until the 1990s, before slowing down. I feed the path of sectoral productivities observed in the data into a model of structural transformation with two sectors (services and manufacturing) which are connected by an Input-Output matrix. The model reproduces the variation of the gross output services share of the Spanish economy between 1980 and 2015. The model implies that -even absent changes in the trends of sectoral productivities -the annual growth rate of GDP between 2015 and 2050 shrinks by 0.6 percentage points with respect to the average growth rate between 1980 and 2015. Hence, annual GDP growth would decline from 2.3% to 1.7%. If sectoral productivities were to equal the levels observed in the Euro Area between 1980 and 2015, the average growth rate of Spanish GDP between 2015 and 2050 would be 2.1%.

The structural transformation from manufacturing to services comes with a process of services deepening: the services share of intermediate inputs rises over time. Moreover, inflation reacts less to monetary policy shocks in countries that are more intensive in services intermediates. We rationalize these facts using a two-sector New Keynesian model where trends in sectoral productivities generate endogenous variations in the Input–Output matrix. Services deepening reduces the contemporaneous response of inflation to monetary policy shocks through a marginal cost channel. Since services prices are stickier than manufacturing prices, the rise of services intermediates raises the sluggishness of sectoral marginal costs and inflation rates.

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