IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedbne/y1997inovp29-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are we investing too little?

Author

Listed:
  • Lynn E. Browne
  • Rebecca Hellerstein

Abstract

One of the most disappointing features of U.S. economic performance over the past 20 years has been the slowing of growth in productivity and, as a result, in real incomes. For many, the explanation can be found in the low U.S. saving rate. Since the mid 1980s, national saving has averaged just over 15 percent of GDP, compared to more than 20 percent during the 1970s. Thus, one plausible explanation for slow productivity growth, at least in recent years, could be that our low saving rate is constraining investment and thereby depriving the nation of both the tools and the technologies that would leverage human skills.> This article considers whether the decline in the U.S. saving rate necessarily means that investment spending is \"too low.\" The authors show that private domestic investment has fallen less than one might infer from the decline in saving, and business use of credit markets in the 1990s has remained unusually low even as the cost of capital has fallen. They highlight the growing importance of investment in business equipment, especially computers, during the 1980s and 1990s, and they suggest that this shift in the composition of investment, coupled with the rapid decline in computer prices, may account for some of the inconsistencies in saving and investment patterns. In particular, investment spending may be limited by the ability of businesses to absorb the new information technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Lynn E. Browne & Rebecca Hellerstein, 1997. "Are we investing too little?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 29-50.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbne:y:1997:i:nov:p:29-50
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/neer/neer1997/neer697c.htm
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/neer/neer1997/neer697c.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard W. Kopcke, 1993. "The determinants of business investment: has capital spending been surprisingly low?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jan, pages 3-31.
    2. Fischer, Stanley, 1988. "Symposium on the Slowdown in Productivity Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 3-7, Fall.
    3. Barry P. Bosworth, 1985. "Taxes and the Investment Recovery," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 16(1), pages 1-45.
    4. Aschauer, David Alan, 1989. "Is public expenditure productive?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 177-200, March.
    5. Martin Feldstein & Lawrence Summers, 1977. "Is the Rate of Profit Falling?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 8(1), pages 211-228.
    6. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C & Moore, George R, 1995. "Monetary Policy Trade-offs and the Correlation between Nominal Interest Rates and Real Output," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 219-239, March.
    7. J. Bradford De Long & Lawrence H. Summers, 1991. "Equipment Investment and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 106(2), pages 445-502.
    8. Coen, Robert M, 1975. "Investment Behavior, the Measurement of Depreciation, and Tax Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(1), pages 59-74, March.
    9. Hulten, Charles R. & Wykoff, Frank C., 1981. "The estimation of economic depreciation using vintage asset prices : An application of the Box-Cox power transformation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 367-396, April.
    10. Lynn E. Browne & Joshua Gleason, 1996. "The saving mystery, or where did the money go?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Sep, pages 15-27.
    11. Martin S. Feldstein, 1997. "The Costs and Benefits of Going from Low Inflation to Price Stability," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 123-166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. E. Yndgaard & Palle S. Andersen & Marc Klau, 1999. "Higher profits and lower capital prices: is factor allocation optimal?," BIS Working Papers 65, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Schündeln, Matthias, 2005. "Modeling Firm Dynamics to Identify the Cost of Financing Constraints in Ghanaian Manufacturing," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Kiel 2005 29, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    3. Sylvain Martel, 2005. "Y a-t-il eu surinvestissement au Canada durant la seconde moitié des années 1990?," Staff Working Papers 05-5, Bank of Canada.
    4. Lynn E. Browne, 1999. "U.S economic performance: good fortune, bubble, or new era?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 3-20.
    5. Lynn E. Browne & Rebecca Hellerstein & Jane Sneddon Little, 1998. "Inflation, asset markets, and economic stabilization: lessons from Asia," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Sep, pages 3-32.
    6. Luci Ellis & Kathryn Smith, 2010. "The Global Upward Trend in the Profit Share," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 56(3), pages 231-256.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vito Tanzi & Howell H. Zee, 1997. "Fiscal Policy and Long-Run Growth," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 44(2), pages 179-209, June.
    2. Coenen Günter & Orphanides Athanasios & Wieland Volker, 2004. "Price Stability and Monetary Policy Effectiveness when Nominal Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Gary Madden & Scott J. Savage, 1998. "Sources of Australian Labour Productivity Change 1950–1994," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 74(227), pages 362-372, December.
    4. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    5. Tim Besley, 2001. "From micro to macro: public policies and aggregate economic performance," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 357-374, September.
    6. Zhenhua Chen & Kingsley E. Haynes, 2015. "Regional Impact of Public Transportation Infrastructure," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 29(3), pages 275-291, August.
    7. Field, Alexander J., 2007. "The equipment hypothesis and US economic growth," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 43-58, January.
    8. Pelaez, Rolando F., 2004. "Dating the productivity slowdown with a structural time-series model," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 253-264, May.
    9. Charles R. Hulten, 2000. "Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography," NBER Working Papers 7471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Klaus Neusser, 1993. "Dynamics of Total Factor Productivities," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 44(2), pages 389-418.
    11. Carlos E. Schonerwald da Silva & Matías Vernengo, 2007. "Foreign Exchange, Interest and the Dynamics of Public Debt in Latin America," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2007_02, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    12. Michael Enowbi Batuo, 2015. "The role of telecommunications infrastructure in the regional economic growth of Africa," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 49(1), pages 313-330, January-M.
    13. Abbas Valadkhani, 2003. "An Empirical Analysis of Australian Labour Productivity," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 273-291, September.
    14. Daechang Kang, 2010. "The Effect of Public Capital on the Productivity - An Analysis on the U.S. Highway Stock," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 26, pages 177-201.
    15. Renelt, David, 1991. "Economic growth : a review of the theoretical and empirical literature," Policy Research Working Paper Series 678, The World Bank.
    16. Lars-Hendrik Roller & Leonard Waverman, 2001. "Telecommunications Infrastructure and Economic Development: A Simultaneous Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 909-923, September.
    17. An, Zidong & Kangur, Alvar & Papageorgiou, Chris, 2019. "On the substitution of private and public capital in production," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 296-311.
    18. Madden, Gary & Savage, Scott J., 1998. "CEE telecommunications investment and economic growth," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 173-195, June.
    19. Tamim Bayoumi & Giovanni Dell'Ariccia & Karl F Habermeier & Tommaso Mancini Griffoli & Fabian Valencia, 2014. "Monetary Policy in the New Normal," IMF Staff Discussion Notes 14/3, International Monetary Fund.
    20. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/c5gs2rgi93abt1s4jkeabou1 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Terregrossa, Ralph A., 1997. "Capital depreciation and investment demand," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 79-95.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Saving and investment;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedbne:y:1997:i:nov:p:29-50. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.