IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/213.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Investment-specific technological change and growth accounting

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Oulton

Abstract

Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell have claimed that the Jorgenson form of growth accounting is conceptually flawed and severely understates the role of technological progress embodied in new capital goods ('embodiment') in explaining US growth. To the contrary, in this paper it is shown that in its technology aspects their model is a special case of the Jorgensonian growth-accounting model. What they call investment-specific technological change is shown to be closely related to the more familiar concept of TFP growth: statements about the one can be translated into statements about the other. Empirically, they claim that the proportion of US growth accounted for by embodiment is about twice as large as estimated by conventional growth accounting. But the difference between these estimates is found to be due more to data than to methodology.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Oulton, 2004. "Investment-specific technological change and growth accounting," Bank of England working papers 213, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2004/WP213.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oulton, Nicholas, 2001. "Must the Growth Rate Decline? Baumol's Unbalanced Growth Revisited," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(4), pages 605-627, October.
    2. Hulten, Charles R, 1992. "Growth Accounting When Technical Change Is Embodied in Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 964-980, September.
    3. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 2000. "The role of investment-specific technological change in the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 91-115, January.
    4. Charles R. Hulten, 1978. "Growth Accounting with Intermediate Inputs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(3), pages 511-518.
    5. Nicholas Oulton, 2004. "Productivity Versus Welfare; Or GDP Versus Weitzman's NDP," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 50(3), pages 329-355, September.
    6. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226304557 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Dale W. Jorgenson & Kevin J. Stiroh, 2000. "Raising the Speed Limit: U.S. Economic Growth in the Information Age," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(1), pages 125-236.
    8. Stephen D. Oliner & Daniel E. Sichel, 2000. "The Resurgence of Growth in the Late 1990s: Is Information Technology the Story?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 3-22, Fall.
    9. D. W. Jorgenson & Z. Griliches, 1967. "The Explanation of Productivity Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 34(3), pages 249-283.
    10. Bradford, David F, 1990. "Extended Accounts for National Income and Product: Comment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 1183-1186, September.
    11. Barro, Robert J, 1999. "Notes on Growth Accounting," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 119-137, June.
    12. Dan Usher, 1973. "The Measurement of Economic Growth," Working Paper 145, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    13. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 1997. "Long-Run Implications of Investment-Specific Technological Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 342-362, June.
    14. Evsey D. Domar, 1963. "Total Productivity and the Quality of Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71(6), pages 586-586.
    15. Whelan, Karl, 2003. "A Two-Sector Approach to Modeling U.S. NIPA Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(4), pages 627-656, August.
    16. Martin L. Weitzman, 1976. "On the Welfare Significance of National Product in a Dynamic Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(1), pages 156-162.
    17. Oulton, Nicholas, 2007. "Investment-specific technological change and growth accounting," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1290-1299, May.
    18. Robert J. Gordon, 1990. "The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gord90-1.
    19. Hasan Bakhshi & Jens Larsen, 2001. "Investment-specific technological progress in the United Kingdom," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Empirical studies of structural changes and inflation, volume 3, pages 49-80, Bank for International Settlements.
    20. Sefton, J. A. & Weale, M. R., 1996. "The net national product and exhaustible resources: The effects of foreign trade," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 21-47, July.
    21. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May.
    22. Martin L. Weitzman, 1997. "Sustainability and Technical Progress," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(1), pages 1-13, March.
    23. Dale W. Jorgenson, 1966. "The Embodiment Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(1), pages 1-1.
    24. Hicks, J. R., 1975. "Value and Capital: An Inquiry into some Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780198282693.
    25. Hulten, Charles R, 1979. "On the "Importance" of Productivity Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 126-136, March.
    26. Kevin J. Stiroh & Dale W. Jorgenson, 2000. "U.S. Economic Growth at the Industry Level," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 161-167, May.
    27. Scott, Maurice, 1990. "Extended Accounts for National Income and Product: A Comment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 1172-1179, September.
    28. Hercowitz, Zvi, 1998. "The 'embodiment' controversy: A review essay," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 217-224, February.
    29. Charles R. Hulten, 1992. "Growth Accounting When Technical Change is Embodied in Capital," NBER Working Papers 3971, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Bakhshi, Hasan & Larsen, Jens, 2005. "ICT-specific technological progress in the United Kingdom," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 648-669, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Nicholas Oulton, 2004. "Productivity Versus Welfare; Or GDP Versus Weitzman's NDP," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 50(3), pages 329-355, September.
    2. Hulten, Charles R., 2010. "Growth Accounting," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 987-1031, Elsevier.
    3. Hasan Bakhshi & Jens Larsen, 2001. "Investment-specific technological progress in the United Kingdom," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Empirical studies of structural changes and inflation, volume 3, pages 49-80, Bank for International Settlements.
    4. Diego Martínez, y José L. Torres & Jesús Rodríguez-López & José L. Torres, 2008. "Productivity growth and technological change in Europe and us," Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces E2008/12, Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
    5. Jorge Durán & Omar Licandro & Luis A. Puch, 2006. "Sobre la medición del crecimiento económico en presencia de progreso técnico incorporado," Working Papers 2006-24, FEDEA.
    6. Oulton, Nicholas, 2007. "Jeremy Greenwood and Per Krusell, "growth accounting with investment-specific technological progress: a discussion of two approaches" a rejoinder," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19710, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Jorge Duran & Omar Licandro, 2015. "Is the output growth rate in NIPA a welfare measure?," Discussion Papers 2015/18, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    8. Ricardo Azevedo Araujo & Gilberto Tadeu Lima, 2008. "Investment-Specific Technological Change, Investment Sectoral Allocation and Human Capital Accumulation in a Model of Export-Led Growth," Anais do XXXVI Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 36th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 200807211332520, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    9. Oulton, Nicholas, 2004. "A statistical framework for the analysis of productivity and sustainable development," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19963, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Ricardo Azevedo Araujo & Gilberto Tadeu Lima, 2012. "Capital-Specific Technological Change and Human Capital Accumulation in a Model of Export-Led Growth," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 65(262), pages 275-311.
    11. Charles R. Hulten, 2000. "Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography," NBER Working Papers 7471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Hwang, Won-Sik & Shin, Jungwoo, 2017. "ICT-specific technological change and economic growth in Korea," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 282-294.
    13. James Bessen, 2002. "Technology Adoption Costs and Productivity Growth: The Transition to Information Technology," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(2), pages 443-469, April.
    14. Nicholas Oulton, 2002. "ICT and Productivity Growth in the United Kingdom," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 18(3), pages 363-379.
    15. Greenwood, Jeremy & Krusell, Per, 2007. "Growth accounting with investment-specific technological progress: A discussion of two approaches," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1300-1310, May.
    16. Raquel Ortega‐Argilés & Mariacristina Piva & Marco Vivarelli, 2014. "The transatlantic productivity gap: Is R&D the main culprit?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(4), pages 1342-1371, November.
    17. Oulton, Nicholas, 2012. "Long term implications of the ICT revolution: Applying the lessons of growth theory and growth accounting," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 1722-1736.
    18. Molinari, Benedetto & Rodríguez, Jesús & Torres, José L., 2013. "Growth and technological progress in selected Pacific countries," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 60-71.
    19. Jorge Durán & Omar Licandro, 2012. "Is the GDP Growth Rate in NIPA a Welfare Measure?," Working Papers 665, Barcelona School of Economics.
    20. Georges Daw, 2024. "Impact of technical change via intermediate consumption: exhaustive general equilibrium growth accounting and reassessment applied to USA 1954–1990," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 23(1), pages 55-87, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:boe:boeewp:213. 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: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.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.