In this paper, we derive and estimate relationships governing variable utilization of capital and labor for a firm solving a dynamic cost-minimization problem. Our method allows for (i) imperfect competition, (ii) increasing returns to scale, (iii) unobserved changes in utilization, (iv) unobserved changes in technology, (v) unobserved fluctuations in the factor prices of capital and labor, (vi) unobserved fluctuations in the shadow price of output, and (vii) the non-existence of a value-added production function. We can estimate the parameters of interest without imposing specific functional forms or using restrictions from assuming the existence of a representative consumer. We find that variable capital and labor utilization explain 40-60 percent of the cyclicality of the Solow residual in U.S. manufacturing, so true technology shocks have a lower correlation with output than the RBC literature assumes. Controlling for variable utilization also eliminates the evidence for increasing returns to scale. We show that our model-based proxies for variable utilization are valid even when extending the workweek of capital potentially has two costs: a shift premium paid to workers, as well as a higher rate of depreciation. Thus, these proxies can be used under very general conditions in a wide range of empirical work.

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.

This book aims at investigating from the perspective of the major economic dictionaries the notions of economic crisis and cycle. The project consists in giving an extensive summary of a number of significant entries on this subject, with an introductory essay to each entry placing them (and the dictionary to which they belong) in their context, giving some details on the author of the dictionary entry, and assessing the entry’s (and its author’s) contribution. The broad picture (including the history of these encyclopedic tools) will be examined in the introductory essays.

This paper extends the equilibrium business cycle framework to incorporate ex ante skill heterogeneity among workers. Consistent with the empirical evidence, skilled and unskilled workers in the model face the same degree of cyclical variation in real wages although unskilled workers are subject to substantially higher procyclical variation in employment. Systematic cyclical changes in the average skill level of employed workers are shown to induce bias in aggregate measures of cyclical variation in the labor input, productivity, and the real wage. The introduction of skill heterogeneity improves the model’s ability to match the empirical correlation between total hours and the real wage but the correlation between total hours and labor productivity remains higher than in the data.

The award-winning The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition is now available as a dynamic online resource. Consisting of over 1,900 articles written by leading figures in the field including Nobel prize winners, this is the definitive scholarly reference work for a new generation of economists. Regularly updated! This product is a subscription based product.

A longstanding puzzle of empirical economics is that average labor productivity declines during recessions and increases during booms. This paper provides a framework to assess the empirical importance of competing hypotheses for explaining the observed procyclicality. For each competing hypothesis we derive the implications for cyclical productivity conditional on expectations of future demand and supply conditions. The novelty of the paper is that we exploit the tremendous heterogeneity in long-run structural changes across individual plants to identify the short-run sources of procyclical productivity. Our findings favor an adjustment cost model which involves a productivity penalty for downsizing as the largest source of procyclical labor productivity.