IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedrwp/03-06.html

On the employment effect of technology : evidence from U.S. manufacturing for 1958-1996

Author

Listed:
  • Yongsung Chang
  • Jay H. Hong

Abstract

Recently, Gal and others have found that technological progress may be contractionary: a favorable technology shock reduces hours worked in the short run. We ask whether this observation is robust in disaggregate data. According to our VAR analysis of 458 four-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for 1958-1996, some industries do exhibit temporary reduction in hours in response to a permanent increase in TFP. However, there are far more industries in which technological progress significantly increases hours. Using micro data on average price duration, we ask whether the difference across industries is related to the stickiness of industry-output prices. Among 87 manufacturing goods, we do not find such a relation.

Suggested Citation

  • Yongsung Chang & Jay H. Hong, 2003. "On the employment effect of technology : evidence from U.S. manufacturing for 1958-1996," Working Paper 03-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedrwp:03-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/working_papers/2003/wp_03-6.cfm
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/RichmondFedOrg/publications/research/working_papers/2003/pdf/wp03-6.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miles S. Kimball & John G. Fernald & Susanto Basu, 2006. "Are Technology Improvements Contractionary?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1418-1448, December.
    2. Unknown, 1998. "Discussion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 651-652, October.
    3. Michael Dotsey, 1999. "Structure from shocks," Working Paper 99-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    4. repec:bla:scandj:v:105:y:2003:i:4:p:555-579 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 2004. "Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 947-985, October.
    6. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 1995. "Capital Utilization and Returns to Scale," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1995, Volume 10, pages 67-124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Francis, Neville & Ramey, Valerie A., 2005. "Is the technology-driven real business cycle hypothesis dead? Shocks and aggregate fluctuations revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1379-1399, November.
    8. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1, January-J.
    9. José Angulo & N. Cressie & C. Wikle & P. Soidán & M. Bande & C. Glasbey & John Kent & Ana Militino & Michael Stein, 1998. "Discussion," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 7(2), pages 283-285, December.
    10. Zvi Griliches, 1998. "R&D and Productivity Growth at the Industry Level: Is There Still a Relationship?," NBER Chapters, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 213-240, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jordi Gali, 1999. "Technology, Employment, and the Business Cycle: Do Technology Shocks Explain Aggregate Fluctuations?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 249-271, March.
    12. Jermann, Urban J., 1998. "Asset pricing in production economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 257-275, April.
    13. Unknown, 1998. "Discussion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 619-643, October.
    14. Berndt, Ernst R, 1976. "Reconciling Alternative Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 58(1), pages 59-68, February.
    15. Unknown, 1998. "Discussion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 645-650, October.
    16. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    17. Basu, Susanto & Fernald, John G, 1997. "Returns to Scale in U.S. Production: Estimates and Implications," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 249-283, April.
    18. Neville Francis & Valerie A. Ramey, 2002. "Is the Technology-Driven Real Business Cycle Hypothesis Dead?," NBER Working Papers 8726, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Kortum, Samuel, 1993. "Equilibrium R&D and the Patent-R&D Ratio: U.S. Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 450-457, May.
    20. Hall, Robert E., 1987. "Productivity and the business cycle," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 421-444, January.
    21. Annika Alexius & Mikael Carlsson, 2005. "Measures of Technology and the Business Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 299-307, May.
    22. Domenico J. Marchetti & francesco Nucci, 2001. "Unobserved Factor Utilization, Technology Shocks and Business Cycles," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 392, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    23. John Shea, 1999. "What Do Technology Shocks Do?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1998, volume 13, pages 275-322, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Gali, Jordi & Lopez-Salido, J. David & Valles, Javier, 2003. "Technology shocks and monetary policy: assessing the Fed's performance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 723-743, May.
    25. Gort, Michael & Klepper, Steven, 1982. "Time Paths in the Diffusion of Product Innovations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(367), pages 630-653, September.
    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. Chahnez Boudaya, 2006. "Stage-specific technology shocks and employment :could we reconcile with the RBC models?," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques v06043, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    2. Francesco Franco & Thomas Philippon, 2007. "Firms and Aggregate Dynamics," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 587-600, November.
    3. Chahnez Boudaya, 2005. "The effects of technological innovations on employment: a new explanation," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques v05013, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    4. Giancarlo Corsetti & Luca Dedola & Sylvain Leduc, 2008. "Productivity, External Balance, and Exchange Rates: Evidence on the Transmission Mechanism among G7 Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2006, pages 117-194, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Yongsung Chang & Jay H. Hong, 2006. "Do Technological Improvements in the Manufacturing Sector Raise or Lower Employment?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 352-368, March.
    2. Domenico J. Marchetti & Francesco Nucci, 2007. "Pricing Behavior and the Response of Hours to Productivity Shocks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1587-1611, October.
    3. Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas, 2007. "Technology Shocks and Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1436-1459, October.
    4. Francis, Neville & Ramey, Valerie A., 2005. "Is the technology-driven real business cycle hypothesis dead? Shocks and aggregate fluctuations revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1379-1399, November.
    5. Chahnez Boudaya, 2005. "The effects of technological innovations on employment: a new explanation," Post-Print halshs-00193600, HAL.
    6. Dufourt, Frederic, 2005. "Demand and productivity components of business cycles: Estimates and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(6), pages 1089-1105, September.
    7. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Robert Vigfusson, 2004. "The Response of Hours to a Technology Shock: Evidence Based on Direct Measures of Technology," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 381-395, 04/05.
    8. Ghent, Andra C., 2009. "Comparing DSGE-VAR forecasting models: How big are the differences?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 864-882, April.
    9. Liu, Zheng & Phaneuf, Louis, 2007. "Technology shocks and labor market dynamics: Some evidence and theory," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2534-2553, November.
    10. John Shea, 1999. "What Do Technology Shocks Do?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1998, volume 13, pages 275-322, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Chang, Yongsung & Hornstein, Andreas & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel, 2009. "On the employment effects of productivity shocks: The role of inventories, demand elasticity, and sticky prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 328-343, April.
    12. Tripier, Fabien, 2006. "Sticky prices, fair wages, and the co-movements of unemployment and labor productivity growth," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 2749-2774, December.
    13. Zheng Liu & Louis Phaneuf, 2008. "Do Nominal Rigidities Matter for the Transmission of Technology Shocks?," Cahiers de recherche 0837, CIRPEE.
    14. Sergio Rebelo, 2005. "Real Business Cycle Models: Past, Present, and Future," NBER Working Papers 11401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Dedola, Luca & Neri, Stefano, 2007. "What does a technology shock do? A VAR analysis with model-based sign restrictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 512-549, March.
    16. Neville Francis & Michael T. Owyang & Athena T. Theodorou, 2003. "The use of long-run restrictions for the identification of technology shocks," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 85(Nov), pages 53-66.
    17. Barišić, Patrik & Kovač, Tibor & Arčabić, Vladimir, 2023. "More than just supply and demand: Macroeconomic shock decomposition in Croatia during and after the transition period," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 420-438.
    18. Virgiliu Midrigan, 2010. "Is Firm Pricing State or Time Dependent? Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(3), pages 643-656, August.
    19. David Altig & Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Jesper Linde, 2011. "Firm-Specific Capital, Nominal Rigidities and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 225-247, April.
    20. Kim, Sangho & Lim, Hyunjoon & Park, Donghyun, 2010. "Productivity and Employment in a Developing Country: Some Evidence from Korea," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 514-522, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    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:fip:fedrwp:03-06. 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: Christian Pascasio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbrius.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.