New Data and Output Concepts for Understanding Productivity Trends

William Nordhaus

No 8097, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The present study is the second is a series of three papers devoted to issues in the measurement of productivity and productivity growth. The contributions of the present paper are three. First, it introduces a new approach to measuring industrial productivity based on income-side data that are published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The data are internally consistent in that both inputs and outputs are income-side measures of value added, whereas the usual productivity measures combine expenditure-side output measures with income-side input measures. Second, because of interest in the 'new economy,' we have also constructed a set of new-economy accounts. For the purpose of this study, we define the new economy as machinery, electric equipment, telephone and telegraph, and software. Finally, because of concerns about poor deflation in the current output measures, this study constructs a new output concept called 'well-measured output,' which includes only those sectors for which output is relatively well measured. We present a brief summary of the behavior of the alternative measures.

JEL-codes: E3 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-01
Note: EFG PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8097.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: New Data and Output Concepts for Understanding Productivity Trends (2000)
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:nbr:nberwo:8097

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8097

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().