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Productivity and U.S. Macroeconomic Performance: Interpreting the Past and Predicting the Future with a Two-Sector Real Business Cycle Model

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Author Info
Peter N. Ireland () (Boston College)
Scott Schuh () (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)

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Abstract

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.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Boston College Department of Economics in its series Boston College Working Papers in Economics with number 642.

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Length: 38 pages
Date of creation: 01 Apr 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:642

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Related research
Keywords: productivity; real business cycle;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
O41 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
O47 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Measurement of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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References listed on IDEAS
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Federico di Pace, 2008. "Revisiting the Comovement Puzzle: the Input-Output Structure as an Additional Solution," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0807, Birkbeck, School of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2007. "Unmeasured Investment and the Puzzling U.S. Boom in the 1990s," NBER Working Papers 13499, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Andrle, Michal, 2008. "The Role of Trends and Detrending in DSGE Models," MPRA Paper 13289, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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