Productivity and U.S. Macroeconomic Performance: Interpreting the Past and Predicting the Future with a Two-Sector Real Business Cycle Model / Peter N. Ireland, Scott Schuh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ireland, Peter N.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Schuh, Scott.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13532.

NBER working paper series no. w13532

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Productivity and U.S. Macroeconomic Performance

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

A two-sector real business cycle model, estimated with postwar U.S. data, identifies shocks to the levels and growth rates of total factor productivity in distinct consumption- and investment-goods-producing technologies. This model attributes most of the productivity slowdown of the 1970s to the consumption-goods sector; it suggests that a slowdown in the investment-goods sector occurred later and was much less persistent. Against this broader backdrop, the model interprets the more recent episode of robust investment and investment-specific technological change during the 1990s largely as a catch-up in levels that is unlikely to persist or be repeated anytime soon.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2007.