Productivity and U.S. macroeconomic performance
Subtitle: interpreting the past and predicting the future with a two-sector real business cycle model
By: Peter N. Ireland, Scott Schuh.
Contributors: Schuh, Scott.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 13532.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 13532.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 29
Subjects: Business cycles -- United States -- 20th century -- Econometric models
Description: 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: "October 2007"

Includes bibliographical references (p. 24-29).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).