Carol A. Corrado Charles R. Hulten Daniel E. Sichel
Abstract
Published macroeconomic data traditionally exclude most intangible investment from measured GDP. This situation is beginning to change, but our estimates suggest that as much as $800 billion is still excluded from U.S. published data (as of 2003), and that this leads to the exclusion of more than $3 trillion of business intangible capital stock. To assess the importance of this omission, we add capital to the standard sources-of-growth framework used by the BLS, and find that the inclusion of our list of intangible assets makes a significant difference in the observed patterns of U.S. economic growth. The rate of change of output per worker increases more rapidly when intangibles are counted as capital, and capital deepening becomes the unambiguously dominant source of growth in labor productivity. The role of multifactor productivity is correspondingly diminished, and labor's income share is found to have decreased significantly over the last 50 years.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
11948.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 2006 Date of revision: Publication status: published as Corrado, Carol, Charles Hulten and Daniel Sichel. "Intangible Capital and Economic Growth." Research Technology Management (January 2007) Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11948
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Find related papers by JEL classification: O47 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Measurement of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Capital; Investment; Capacity E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth
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Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2000.
"Is the stock market overvalued?,"
Quarterly Review,
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Fall, pages 20-40.
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