Procyclical Labour Productivity: A Closer Look at a Stylized Fact

Robert Hart and Jim Malley

Economica, 1999, vol. 66, issue 264, 533-550

Abstract: At 4‐digit United States manufacturing industry level, we find evidence suggesting that the stylized fact of procyclical labour productivity should be treated with great caution. We use the NBER Manufacturing Productivity database to investigate the relationship between hourly labour productivity and real output for 450 industries for the years 1958–91. Labour productivity is significantly procyclical in 63% of industries and acyclical in 36%. In the latter respect, a high proportion of investment goods industries display acyclical productivity. Cross‐section regressions are carried out that seek to explain the interindustry distribution of cyclicality. The analysis attributes a significant role to variations in materials costs, as a proxy for fluctuations in factor utilization.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0335.00187

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:econom:v:66:y:1999:i:264:p:533-550

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0013-0427

Access Statistics for this article

Economica is currently edited by Frank Cowell, Tore Ellingsen and Alan Manning

More articles in Economica from London School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().