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Accounting for Productivity Dispersion over the Business Cycle

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Abstract

This paper presents accounting decompositions of changes in aggregate labor and capital productivity. Our simplest decomposition breaks changes in an aggregate productivity ratio into two components: A mean component, which captures common changes to firm factor productivity ratios, and a dispersion component, which captures changes in the variance and higher order moments of their distribution. In standard models with heterogeneous firms and frictions to firm input decisions, the dispersion component is a function of changes in the second and higher moments of the log of marginal revenue factor productivities and reflects changes in the extent of distortions to firm factor input allocations across firms. We apply our decomposition to public firm data from the United States and Japan. We find that the mean component is responsible for most of the variation in aggregate productivity over the business cycle, while the dispersion component plays a modest role.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Kurtzman & David Zeke, 2016. "Accounting for Productivity Dispersion over the Business Cycle," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-045, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2016-45
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2016.045
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    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Caggese & Ander Pérez-Orive, 2017. "Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-009, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Clymo, AJ, 2017. "Heterogeneous Firms, Wages, and the Effects of Financial Crises," Economics Discussion Papers 20572, University of Essex, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Accounting Decomposition; Business Cycles; Misallocation; Productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

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