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This authoritative and stimulating book represents a fundamental critique of the aggregate production function, a concept widely used in macroeconomics.
The aggregate production function is at the center of contemporaneous macroeconomics. Both growth and business cycle theories offer predictions that depend on the specification of the aggregate technology. In this paper I postulate that the specification of the aggregate technology is endogenous and I study if the aggregate production function mutates in response to changes in the economic environment. To some extent the previous statement is obvious: the aggregate production function is, leaving existence issues aside, the aggregation of all the micro-technologies present in the economy. If the micro-technologies change in time so should do the aggregate technology. I define the aggregate short-run technology and the aggregate long-run technology respectively a mapping from the variable input to output and a mapping from aggregate investment to future capacity. To study mutations that affect short run fluctuations I consider the aggregate output elasticity with respect to the labor supply shocks. To study mutations that affect the long-run I consider the elasticity of capacity with respect to investment. I use a detailed dataset that covers the US manufactirung sector. The results show that the short-run elasticity does not appear to have changed in the sample while the long-run as increased. Finally I show that the long-run technology is a complicated function but that is well approximated by a Cobb-Douglas.
Economic research monograph on the economic theory of production functions and aggregation - includes a bibliography pp. 301 to 307.
This work deals with the question of the conditions for the existence of aggregate production functions (the heart of macroeconomics). It examines the conditions for approximate aggregation and through simulation experiments, considers why aggregate production functions appear to work.
"Of the major kinds of physical infrastructure, electricity generating capacity has roughly the same marginal productivity as physical capital as a whole. So have roads-plus-rail, globally and in lower-income countries. Telephones, however, and transport routes in higher-income countries, have higher marginal productivity than other kinds of capital"--Cover.
This Memorandum is an analysis and comparison of the implications of several different but related aggregative models of long-run economic growth. These models differ somewhat in both their ex planations of past economic growth and their pro jections of future growth. The analysis bey examining the variables and relationships stressed by the various models, and the different explanations of the 1929-1960 growth record that these models provide. A general aggregative production function is developed which includes the various models as special cases. The role of growth of the labor supply, of capital for mation, of technological advance, and of rising educational standards is examined within the framework of the models. Finally, the study examines a number of growth projections for the American economy, attempts to evaluate them within the framework provided by the general model, and suggests some of the major uncertainties involved in growth projections. One of the major con clusions of the study is that projections of U.S. growth over the next decade are extremely sensi tive to the economic model used in making those projections, and in particular to the assumed rates of growth of capital stock and total factor productivity. (Author).
Written for advanced undergraduates and first year graduate students, this text condenses the fundamental issues of growth theory and covers the ideas in this clear text. It is also aimed at scholars and professional economists as it contains references to practical policy issues.
The productivity slowdown of the 1970s and 1980s and the resumption of productivity growth in the 1990s have provoked controversy among policymakers and researchers. Economists have been forced to reexamine fundamental questions of measurement technique. Some researchers argue that econometric approaches to productivity measurement usefully address shortcomings of the dominant index number techniques while others maintain that current productivity statistics underreport damage to the environment. In this book, the contributors propose innovative approaches to these issues. The result is a state-of-the-art exposition of contemporary productivity analysis. Charles R. Hulten is professor of economics at the University of Maryland. He has been a senior research associate at the Urban Institute and is chair of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Michael Harper is chief of the Division of Productivity Research at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Edwin R. Dean, formerly associate commissioner for Productivity and Technology at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is adjunct professor of economics at The George Washington University.