This paper maintains that the commonly used measure of the aggregate stock of public capital is conceptually divergent from the "true" public capital input in private production technologies. Consequently, the published measure has the potential to misrepresent the historic growth profile of the public capital input and the productivity of government purchases in general. As a test of this hypothesis, the identifying assumption of a standard stochastic growth model is combined with observations on output, consumption, labor hours and government purchases to deduce public capital paths that are mutually consistent with observed flows and economic theory. It is found that the inferred series grows more rapidly than the published series during the 1973-1993 period thereby providing evidence that government under-investment is not an important source of declines in U.S. productivity growth.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number
00-03.
Length: Date of creation: 2000 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nya:albaec:00-03
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, BA 110 University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 U.S.A. Phone: (518) 442-4735 Fax: (518) 442-4736
Find related papers by JEL classification: E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy