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New Developments in Productivity Analysis

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.

632 pages | 632 pages, 31 line drawings, 84 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2001

National Bureau of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth

Economics and Business: Economics--Development, Growth, Planning

Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction—Charles R. Hulten, Edwin R. Dean, and Michael J. Harper
1. Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography
Charles R. Hulten
Comment: Jack E. Triplett
2. The BLS Productivity Measurement Program
Edwin R. Dean and Michael J. Harper
3. Which (Old) Ideas on Productivity Measurement are Ready to Use?
W. Erwin Diewert
4. Dynamic Factor Demand Models and Productivity Analysis
M. Ishaq Nadiri and Ingmar R. Prucha
Comment: Dale W. Jorgenson
Reply to Dale W. Jorgenson
5. After "Technical Progress and the Aggregate Production Function"
Robert M. Solow
6. Accounting for Growth
Jeremy Greenwood and Boyan Jovanovic
Comment: Barry Bosworth
7. Why is Productivity Procyclical? Why Do We Care?
Susanto Basu and John Fernald
Comment: Catherine J. Morrison Paul
8. Aggregate Productivity Growth: Lessons from Microeconomic Evidence
Lucia Foster, Thomas Haltiwanger, and C. J. Krizan
Comment: Mark J. Roberts
9. Sources of Productivity Growth in the American Coal Industry: 1972-95
Denny Ellerman, Thomas M. Stoker, and Ernst R. Berndt
Comment: Larry Rosenblum
10. Service Sector Productivity Comparisons: Lessons for Measurement
Martin Neil Baily and Eric Zitzewitz
Comment: Robert J. Gordon
11. Different Approaches to International Comparison of Total Factor Productivity
Nazrul Islam
Comment: Charles I. Jones
12. Whatever Happened to Productivity Growth?
Dale W. Jorgenson and Eric Yip
13. Productivity of the U.S. Agricultural Sector: The Case of Undesirable Outputs
V. Eldon Ball, Rolf Färe, Shawna Grosskopf, and Richard Nehring
Comment: Robin C. Sickles
14. Total Resource Productivity: Accounting for Changing Environmental Quality
Frank M. Gollop and Gregory P. Swinand
Comment: William Pizer
15. A Perspective on What We Know about the Sources of Productivity Growth
Zvi Griliches

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