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Working Paper
Productivity Slowdown: Reducing the Measure of Our Ignorance
Growth accounting suggests that the bulk of the post-2004 slowdown in output growth in the U.S. is attributed to a residual called TFP. In this paper we provide a tractable accounting framework with firm heterogeneity to link this residual to innovations, markup dispersion, and potential measurement errors. Theories of creative destruction offer rich testable predictions of how the quality upgrading of products, the process efficiency of different firms, and markup dispersion in the market interact and therefore constitute a key approach to shed light on the slowdown in TFP growth. Surveying ...
Working Paper
Missing Growth from Creative Destruction
Statistical agencies typically impute inflation for disappearing products from the inflation rate for surviving products. As some products disappear precisely because they are displaced by better products, inflation may be lower at these points than for surviving products. As a result, creative destruction may result in overstated inflation and understated growth. We use a simple model to relate this ?missing growth? to the frequency and size of various kinds of innovations. Using U.S. Census data, we then apply two ways of assessing the magnitude of missing growth for all private nonfarm ...
Working Paper
Productivity in the World Economy During and After the Pandemic
This paper reviews how productivity has evolved around the world since the pandemic began in 2020. Productivity in many countries has been volatile. We conclude that the broad contours of productivity growth during this period have been heavily shaped by predictable cyclical patterns. Looking at U.S. industry data, we find little evidence that the sharp rise in telework has had a notable impact, good or bad, on productivity. Stepping back, the data so far appear consistent with a continuation of the slow-productivity-growth trajectory that we faced before the pandemic.
Journal Article
Future Output Loss from COVID-Induced School Closures
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive disruptions to the U.S. educational system. Research on school closures—particularly combined with parental income loss—implies that children are likely to attain lower levels of lifetime education compared with pre-pandemic trends. Projections show learning disruptions could lower the level of annual economic output ¼ percentage point on average over the next 70 years. The effect is small the first 5–10 years then peaks at a loss of ½ percentage point in about 25 years, when the children reach prime working age.
Journal Article
Productivity During and Since the Pandemic
U.S. labor productivity initially surged in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the massive economic upheaval. As the economy recovered, the level of productivity retreated to its slow pre-pandemic trend. As of mid-2024, it remained close to but just above that trend. The surge and retreat in productivity follows the pre-pandemic cyclical relationship in which U.S. productivity rises temporarily in recessions. This example highlights the need to look through temporary cyclical effects when trying to infer longer-run trends.
Journal Article
Does Working from Home Boost Productivity Growth?
An enduring consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is a notable shift toward remote and hybrid work. This has raised questions regarding whether the shift had a significant effect on the growth rate of U.S. productivity. Analyzing the relationship between GDP per hour growth and the ability to telework across industries shows that industries that are more adaptable to remote work did not experience a bigger decline or boost in productivity growth since 2020 than less adaptable industries. Thus, teleworking most likely has neither substantially held back nor boosted productivity growth.
Journal Article
Are Markups Driving the Ups and Downs of Inflation?
How much impact have price markups for goods and services had on the recent surge and the subsequent decline of inflation? Since 2021, markups have risen substantially in a few industries such as motor vehicles and petroleum. However, aggregate markups—which are more relevant for overall inflation—have generally remained flat, in line with previous economic recoveries over the past three decades. These patterns suggest that markup fluctuations have not been a main driver of the ups and downs of inflation during the post-pandemic recovery.
Journal Article
What's Holding Back Business Formation?
The pace of business start-ups in the United States has declined over the past few decades. Economic theory suggests that business creation depends on the available workforce, and data analysis supports this strong link. By contrast, the relationship between start-ups and labor productivity is less well-defined, in part because entrepreneurs face initial costs that rise with productivity, specifically their own lost income from alternative employment. Overall, policies that incorporate improving labor availability may help to boost new business growth.
Journal Article
How Does Business Dynamism Link to Productivity Growth?
The rate of business turnover has declined since the late 1970s, which some argue has hampered growth in innovation and productivity. This sounds like a plausible contributor to lackluster economic growth, but the connection between business turnover and productivity is more subtle. First, while business turnover has steadily declined over the past 35 years, aggregate productivity growth has not. Second, even when business starts were at historical highs, existing firms lost very little market share to new firms. This suggests that older firms are just as innovative as newcomers.
Journal Article
Is Rising Concentration Hampering Productivity Growth?
U.S. productivity is growing slower than in the past. Meanwhile, sales have become increasingly concentrated in the largest businesses. Analysis suggests that IT innovation may have facilitated the rise in concentration by reducing the cost for large firms to enter new markets. This contributed to booming productivity growth from 1995 to 2005. Though large firms are more profitable, their expansion may have increased competition and reduced profit margins within markets. Lower profit margins in a given market could have deterred innovation, eventually lowering growth.