Explaining a Productive Decade

By Stephen D. Oliner, Daniel E. Sichel, Kevin J. Stiroh. 2007

276 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper analyzes the sources of U.S. productivity growth in recent years using both aggregate and industry-level data. We confirm the central role for information technology (IT) in the productivity revival during 1995-2000 and show that IT played a significant, though smaller, role after 2000. Productivity growth after 2000 appears to have been boosted by industry restructuring and cost cutting in response to profit pressures, an unlikely source of future strength. In addition, the incorporation of intangible capital into the growth accounting framework takes some of the luster off the performance of labor productivity since 2000 and makes the gain during 1995-2000 look larger than in the official data. Finally, we examine the outlook for trend growth in labor productivity; our estimate, though subject to much uncertainty, is centered at a year, faster than the lackluster pace that prevailed before 1995 but somewhat slower than the 1995-2006 average.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b2fa24540e3523658738b929e21969ec7837119

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. T. Foxon
2. P. Pearson
3. Jun Du
4. Kaiyang Zhong
5. Yanlin Yang
6. Robert C. Seamans
7. Huihui Li
8. Jason Furman

Citations in the corpus

• High-growth firms and productivity: evidence from the United Kingdom (2015, background): “Mason and Brown (2010) find that being knowledge-based and innovative is identified to characterize most HGFs in Scotland, which is also the key driver of the spectacular growth resurgence in the United States (Jorgenson, Ho and Stiroh, 2005; Oliner, Sichel and Stiroh, 2008 1 ), and the gap between ”
• A low carbon industrial revolution? Insights and challenges from past technological and economic transformations (2012, background): “5 Crafts (2010b, 2011), drawing on Oliner et al. (2007), compares the impact of ICT in the US with that of steam in the UK.”
• AI and the Economy (2018, background): “More recently, information technology (IT) has been credited with broad posi‑ tive impacts on productivity (e.g., Oliner, Sichel, and Stiroh 2007; Jor‑ genson, Ho, and Stiroh 2008).”
• Digital Economy Development, Industrial Structure Upgrading and Green Total Factor Productivity: Empirical Evidence from China’s Cities (2022, methodology): “Oliner et al. (2008) used US industry data and found that information technology played an important role in the economic recovery from 1995 to 2000 [17].”
• The Arrival of Fast Internet and Employment in Africa (2019, background): “The existing literature reviewed here, the role of ICT in the resurgence of U.S. productivity growth (Draca et al. , 2007; Oliner et al. , 2007; Jorgenson et al. , 2008; Syverson, 2011), and a considerable body of important correlational evidence from developing countries all underscore the promise…”