IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3034.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Invariance Properties of Solow's Productivity Residual

Author

Listed:
  • Robert E. Hall

Abstract

In 1957, Robert Solow published a paper that provided the theoretical foundation for almost all subsequent work on productivity measurement. Although most applications of Solow's method have measured trends over fairly long time periods, the method also has important uses at higher frequencies. Under constant returns to scale and competition, the Solow residual measures the pure shift of the production function. Shifts in product demand and factor supplies should have no effect on the residual. Tests of this invariance property show that it fails in a great many industries. Though other explanations may deserve some weight, it appears that the leading cause of the failure of invariance is increasing returns and market power. The empirical findings give some support to the theory of monopolistic competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert E. Hall, 1989. "Invariance Properties of Solow's Productivity Residual," NBER Working Papers 3034, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3034
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3034.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "The Relation between Price and Marginal Cost in U.S. Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 921-947, October.
    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. Iain Cockburn & Murray Frank, 1992. "Market Conditions and Retirement of Physical Capital: Evidence fron Oil Tankers," NBER Working Papers 4194, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Juessen, Falko & Linnemann, Ludger, 2012. "Markups and fiscal transmission in a panel of OECD countries," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 674-686.
    3. Huw Dixon & ANTHONY SAVAGAR, 2017. "The Effect of Firm Entry on Capacity Utilization and Macroeconomic Productivity," 2017 Meeting Papers 1130, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Eichenbaum, Martin, 1991. "Real business-cycle theory : Wisdom or whimsy?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 607-626, October.
    5. Satyajit Chatterjee & Russell Cooper, 2014. "Entry And Exit, Product Variety, And The Business Cycle," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(4), pages 1466-1484, October.
    6. Auerbach, Alan J. & Hassett, Kevin, 1992. "Tax policy and business fixed investment in the United States," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 141-170, March.
    7. Ferreira da Silva, Gisele, 2002. "The impact of financial system development on business cycles volatility: cross-country evidence," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 233-253, June.
    8. Sbordone, Argia M., 1996. "Cyclical productivity in a model of labor hoarding," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 331-361, October.
    9. Harald Badinger & Fritz Breuss, 2005. "Has Austria’s Accession to the EU Triggered an Increase in Competition? A Sectoral Markup Study," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 32(2), pages 145-180, June.
    10. Giovanni Gallipoli & Gianluigi Pelloni, 2013. "Macroeconomic Effects of Job Reallocations: A Survey," Review of Economic Analysis, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, vol. 5(2), pages 127-176, December.
    11. 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.
    12. Harald Badinger & Fritz Breuss, 2004. "Has Austria's Accession to the EU Triggered an Increase in Competition? A Sectoral Markup Study," WIFO Working Papers 220, WIFO.
    13. Jeremy Greenwood & Zvi Hercowitz & Per Krusell, 1992. "Macroeconomic implications of investment-specific technological change," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 76, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    14. Huggett, Mark & Ospina, Sandra, 2001. "Does productivity growth fall after the adoption of new technology?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 173-195, August.
    15. Catherine Bruno & Lucrezia Reichlin, 1991. "Mesure de la productivité et fluctuations économiques," Revue de l'OFCE, Programme National Persée, vol. 35(1), pages 57-76.
    16. Wolfgang Keller, 1997. "Trade and Transmission of Technology," NBER Working Papers 6113, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Romer, Paul M., 1990. "Human capital and growth: Theory and evidence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 251-286, January.
    18. Semmler, Will & Gong, Gang, 1996. "Estimating parameters of real business cycle models," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 301-325, September.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:3034. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.