IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/08017.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Embodied Technological Progress and the Productivity Slowdown in Japan

Author

Listed:
  • TOKUI Joji
  • INUI Tomohiko
  • Young Gak KIM

Abstract

Concerns over the rise in the vintage of capital in the Japanese economy have focused attention on the technological progress embodied in capital. In this paper, we derive the theoretical relationship between the rate of technological progress embodied in capital, the obsolescence rate of capital, and the average vintage of capital, then we estimate these rates by using firm-level panel data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) Basic Survey of Japanese Business Structure and Activities in the period between 1997 and 2002. To measure the obsolescence rate of capital by estimating the production function, it is necessary to construct a capital stock series that takes only physical depreciation into account for each vintage capital held by each firm. To do that, we prepared industry-specific patterns of the physical depreciation ratio of capital goods, based on the pattern of the physical depreciation ratio of each type of capital goods by obtaining information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the Japan Industrial Productivity Database (JIP) 2006's investment matrices cross-classified by types of capital goods and industries. We applied these industry-specific patterns of the physical depreciation ratio of capital goods to the individual firms' investment series, constructing a capital stock series in each firm. We measured the obsolescence rate by estimating the production function, which is similar to the one employed in Sakellaris and Wilson (2004). We added several control variables to their equations. The estimated obsolescence rate of machinery and equipment is found to be between 8 and 22 percent per annum, which is very close to the estimated ratios in other previous research using the production function. This estimation result implies that the average rate of technological progress embodied in machinery and equipment is between 0.2 and 0.4 percent in Japan. The average vintage of capital in the manufacturing industry in the 1990s was estimated to increase by almost two years, because of weak investment during that decade, and it has the effect of lowering the rate of productivity growth in the industry by 0.4 to 0.8 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • TOKUI Joji & INUI Tomohiko & Young Gak KIM, 2008. "Embodied Technological Progress and the Productivity Slowdown in Japan," Discussion papers 08017, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:08017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/08e017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gittleman, Maury & ten Raa, Thijs & Wolff, Edward N., 2006. "The vintage effect in TFP-growth: An analysis of the age structure of capital," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 306-328, September.
    2. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226304557 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. J. Bradford Jensen & Robert H. McGuckin & Kevin J. Stiroh, 2001. "The Impact Of Vintage And Survival On Productivity: Evidence From Cohorts Of U.S. Manufacturing Plants," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 323-332, May.
    4. Fumio Hayashi & Edward C. Prescott, 2004. "The 1990s in Japan: a lost decade," Chapters, in: Paolo Onofri (ed.), The Economics of an Ageing Population, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Plutarchos Sakellaris & Daniel J. Wilson, 2004. "Quantifying Embodied Technological Change," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Jeremy Greenwood & Boyan Jovanovic, 2001. "Accounting for Growth," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Analysis, pages 179-224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    8. Jason G. Cummins & Giovanni L. Violante, 2002. "Investment-Specific Technical Change in the US (1947-2000): Measurement and Macroeconomic Consequences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(2), pages 243-284, April.
    9. Wolff, Edward N, 1991. "Capital Formation and Productivity Convergence over the Long Term," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 565-579, June.
    10. Plutarchos Sakellaris, 2001. "Production function estimation with industry capacity data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-06, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. 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.
    12. Charles R. Hulten & Edwin R. Dean & Michael J. Harper, 2001. "New Developments in Productivity Analysis," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number hult01-1, March.
    13. Bahk, Byong-Hong & Gort, Michael, 1993. "Decomposing Learning by Doing in New Plants," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 561-583, August.
    14. 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.
    15. Robert J. Gordon, 1990. "The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gord90-1, March.
    16. Kjell G. Salvanes & Ragnar Tveteras, 2004. "Plant Exit, Vintage Capital and the Business Cycle," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 255-276, June.
    17. Charles R. Hulten, 1992. "Growth Accounting When Technical Change is Embodied in Capital," NBER Working Papers 3971, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Wolff, Edward N, 1996. "The Productivity Slowdown: The Culprit at Last? Follow-Up on Hulten and Wolff," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1239-1252, December.
    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. KIYOTA Kozo, 2010. "Productivity, Markup, Scale Economies, and the Business Cycle: Estimates from firm-level panel data in Japan," Discussion papers 10040, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    2. Dobbelaere, Sabien & Kiyota, Kozo & Mairesse, Jacques, 2015. "Product and labor market imperfections and scale economies: Micro-evidence on France, Japan and the Netherlands," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 290-322.
    3. Rodríguez-López, Jesús & Torres, José L., 2012. "Technological Sources Of Productivity Growth In Germany, Japan, And The United States," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 133-150, February.

    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. Taiji Hagiwara & Yoichi Matsubayashi, 2019. "Capital Accumulation, Vintage And Productivity: The Japanese Experience," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(03), pages 747-771, June.
    2. Taiji Hagiwara & Yoichi Matsubayashi, 2014. "Capital Accumulation, Vintage and Productivity: The Japanese Experience," Discussion Papers 1418, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
    3. 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).
    4. Daniel J. Wilson, 2002. "Is Embodied Technology the Result of Upstream R&D? Industry-Level Evidence," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(2), pages 285-317, April.
    5. Plutarchos Sakellaris & Daniel J. Wilson, 2004. "Quantifying Embodied Technological Change," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Whelan, Karl, 2007. "Embodiment, productivity, and the age distribution of capital," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 724-740, December.
    7. Samaniego, Roberto M., 2008. "Can technical change exacerbate the effects of labor market sclerosis," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 497-528, February.
    8. 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.
    9. Mukoyama, Toshihiko, 2008. "Endogenous depreciation, mismeasurement of aggregate capital, and the productivity slowdown," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 513-522, March.
    10. Plutarchos Sakellaris & Dan Wilson, 2000. "The Production-Side Approach to Estimating Embodied Technological Change," Electronic Working Papers 00-002, University of Maryland, Department of Economics.
    11. Maliranta, Mika, 1998. "Factors of Productivity Performance by Plant Generation:Some findings from Finnish manufacturing," Discussion Papers 634, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    12. 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.
    13. L. Ngai & Roberto Samaniego, 2009. "Mapping prices into productivity in multisector growth models," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 183-204, September.
    14. Charles R. Hulten, 2000. "Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography," NBER Working Papers 7471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Fernando del Rio Iglesias, 2002. "Neutral, Investment-Specific Technical Progress and the Productivity Slowdown," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 68(1), pages 37-54.
    16. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell, 1996. "Can Technology Improvements Cause Productivity Slowdowns?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 209-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Anthony Landry, 2018. "Capital-Goods Imports and U.S. Growth," 2018 Meeting Papers 208, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. 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].
    19. Vincent BODART & Paul REDING, 2001. "Do Foreign Exchange Markets Matter Dor Industry Stock Returns ? An empirical investigation," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2001016, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    20. Boucekkine, Raouf & de la Croix, David, 2003. "Information technologies, embodiment and growth," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11-12), pages 2007-2034, September.

    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:eti:dpaper:08017. 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.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.