New Developments in Productivity Analysis

Charles R. Hulten, Edwin R. Dean, Michael Harper, Charles R. Hulten, Edwin R. Dean, Michael Harper

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780226360621
• eBook ISBN: 9780226360645
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Econometria

The productivity slowdown of the 1970s and 1980s and the resumption of productivity growth in the 1990s have provoked controversy among policymakers and researchers. Economists have been forced to reexamine fundamental questions of measurement technique. Some researchers argue that econometric approaches to productivity measurement usefully address shortcomings of the dominant index number techniques while others maintain that current productivity statistics underreport damage to the environment. In this book, the contributors propose innovative approaches to these issues. The result is a state-of-the-art exposition of contemporary productivity analysis.

Charles R. Hulten is professor of economics at the University of Maryland. He has been a senior research associate at the Urban Institute and is chair of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Michael Harper is chief of the Division of Productivity Research at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Edwin R. Dean, formerly associate commissioner for Productivity and Technology at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is adjunct professor of economics at The George Washington University.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Prefatory Note and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography
• 2. The BLS Productivity Measurement Program
• 3. Which (Old) Ideas on Productivity Measurement Are Ready to Use?
• 4. Dynamic Factor Demand Models and Productivity Analysis
• 5. After “Technical Progress and the Aggregate Production Function”
• 6. Accounting for Growth
• 7. Why Is Productivity Procyclical? Why Do We Care?
• 8. Aggregate Productivity Growth: Lessons from Microeconomic Evidence
• 9. Sources of Productivity Growth in the American Coal Industry: 1972–95
• 10. Service Sector Productivity Comparisons: Lessons for Measurement
• 11. Different Approaches to International Comparison of Total Factor Productivity
• 12. Whatever Happened to Productivity Growth?
• 13. Productivity of the U.S. Agricultural Sector: The Case of Undesirable Outputs
• 14. Total Resource Productivity: Accounting for Changing Environmental Quality
• 15. A Perspective on What We Know About the Sources of Productivity Growth
• Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index