IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/35415.html

Is Growth Additive?

Author

Listed:
  • Callum J. Jones
  • David López-Salido
  • Thomas Philippon

Abstract

Growth theory is based on the assumption of exponential total factor productivity (TFP) growth, or that the conditional expectation of the next TFP increment is proportional to the current level of TFP. In the U.S., we find strong evidence that TFP growth is conditionally additive, not exponential. Even starting from low priors, Bayesian estimation selects the additive model over the exponential one. In addition, professional forecasts and international TFP series are consistent with the additive model but not with the exponential one.

Suggested Citation

  • Callum J. Jones & David López-Salido & Thomas Philippon, 2026. "Is Growth Additive?," NBER Working Papers 35415, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35415
    Note: DAE DEV EFG PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w35415.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    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:35415. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.