A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence

Jorgenson, Dale W.; Ho, Mun S.; Stiroh, Kevin J.

doi:10.1257/jep.22.1.3

Cited by 457 publications

(265 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…MNVR exploit some new sources of industry-level panel data across countries which have a division of workers into these three education groups and also a measure of ICT capital, the EU KLEMs data (Jorgenson et al, 2008;Timmer et al, 2008). This was constructed through working with the statistical agencies in many OECD countries to obtain information on value added, output, employment, ICT capital and non-ICT capital, etc.…”

Section: Direct Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Wage inequality, technology and trade: 21st century evidence

Reenen

2011

Labour Economics

140

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This paper describes and explains some of the principal trends in the wage and skill distribution in recent decades. There have been sharp increases in wage inequality across the OECD, beginning with the US and UK at the end of the 1970s. A good fraction of this inequality growth is due to technology-related increases in the demand for skilled workers outstripping the growth of their supply. Since the early 1990s, labour markets have become more polarized with jobs in the middle third of the wage distribution shrinking and those in the bottom and top third rising. I argue that this is because computerization complements the most skilled tasks, but substitutes for routine tasks performed by middle wage occupations such as clerks, leaving the demand for the lowest skilled service tasks largely unaffected. Finally, I argue that technology is partly endogenous, for example it has been spurred by trade with China. Thus, trade does matter for changes in the labour market through inducing faster technical change rather than just through the conventional Heckscher-Ohlin mechanism.

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Section: Direct Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Wage inequality, technology and trade: 21st century evidence

Reenen

2011

Labour Economics

140

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“…The reason for this is twofold: first, their direct contribution to increased productivity and economic growth (Jorgenson, Ho and Stiroh, 2008), and second, their indirect contribution resulting from the generation of complementary innovations that improve an economy's Total Factor Productivity (TFP) (Pilat, 2006;Timmer et al, 2010;Jorgenson, Ho and Samuelson, 2011;Ceccobelli, Gitto and Mancuso, 2012). From the perspective of analysing the impact of ICT on firm productivity, empirical evidence shows that: 1) the rates of return on digital investment are relatively much higher than those on investment in other physical components; 2) the reason for this is that digital investment and use often go hand in hand with other endeavours, generally human capital improvement and organisational structure change (Bresnahan, Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 2002;Arvanitis, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ICT uses, innovation and SMEs productivity: Modeling direct and indirect effects in small local firms

Torrent‐Sellens¹,

Díaz-Chao²

2015

IN3 work. pap. ser.

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“…For the United States, Fernald (2014) and Byrne, Oliner and Sichel (2013) contain references. An early analysis is by Jorgenson, Ho and Stiroh (2008). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Pre-Great Recession Slowdown in Productivity

Cette¹,

Fernald²,

Mojon³

2015

ERWP

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In the years since the Great Recession, many observers have highlighted the slow pace of productivity growth around the world. For the United States and Europe, we highlight that this slow pace began prior to the Great Recession. The timing thus suggests that it is important to consider factors other than just the deep crisis itself or policy changes since the crisis. For the United States, at the frontier of knowledge, there was a burst of innovation and reallocation related to the production and use of information technology in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s. That burst ran its course prior to the Great Recession. Continental European economies were falling back relative to that frontier at varying rates since the mid-1990s. We provide VAR and panel-data evidence that changes in real interest rates have influenced productivity dynamics in this period. In particular, the sharp decline in real interest rates that took place in Italy and Spain seem to have triggered unfavorable resource reallocations that were large enough to reduce the level of total factor productivity, consistent with recent theories and firm-level evidence.Keywords: Productivity Growth; Great Recession; Misallocation; Convergence JEL Codes: D24, E23, E44, F45, O47Please address correspondence to fernaldjg@gmail.com. We thank Fabio Canova, Robert Inklaar, Robert Kolmann, Eric Leeper, Werner Roeger, and seminar participants at several institutions for helpful comments. We also thank Genevieve Denoeux, Andrew Tai and Bing Wang for helpful research assistance. John Fernald thanks the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance for hosting him while writing much of the paper. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Banque de France, or anyone else associated with those institutions.Since the Great Recession began in 2007, productivity growth in advanced economies has continually surprised to the downside. 1 A severe downturn and slow recovery could affect productivity through various channels, both cyclical and structural. But, as we emphasize, the slowdown in advanced-economy total factor productivity (TFP) growth was broadly underway prior to the crisis. 2 The pre-Great Recession timing suggests the importance of factors other than just the deep crisis (or ensuing policy changes) itself.To understand the evolution of advanced-economy TFP growth prior to the crisis, we highlight three broad factors that have shaped the global economy in recent decades: Technical change, structural rigidities, and declining real interest rates and abundant credit. Each factor has attracted analysis and attention but they have not, typically, been considered together. For expositional clarity as well as data availability, we focus on a small number of major advanced economies: the U.S. and the four main Euro Area countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain).For the United States, which we assume is at the frontier of knowledge, we highligh...

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A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence

Cited by 457 publications

References 21 publications

Wage inequality, technology and trade: 21st century evidence

Wage inequality, technology and trade: 21st century evidence

ICT uses, innovation and SMEs productivity: Modeling direct and indirect effects in small local firms

The Pre-Great Recession Slowdown in Productivity

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