Accounting for Growth

Jeremy Greenwood and Boyan Jovanovic ()

No 475, RCER Working Papers from University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER)

Abstract: A satisfactory account of the postwar growth experience of the United States should be able to come to terms with the following three facts: -Since the early 1970's there has been a slump in the advance of productivity. -The price of new equipment has fallen steadily over the postwar period. -Since the mid-1970's the skill premium has risen. Variants of Solow's (1960) vintage-capital model can go a long way toward explaining these facts, as this paper shows. In brief, the explanations are: -Productivity slowed down because the implementation of information technologies was both costly and slow. -Technological advance in the capital goods sector has lead to a decline in equipment prices. -The skill premium rose because the new, more efficient capital is complementary with skilled labor and/or because the use of skilled labor facilitates the adoption of new technologies.

Keywords: Investment-specific technological progress; vintage-capital models; learning by doing; diffusion lags. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2000-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Forthcoming in New Directions in Productivity Analysis, edited by Charles R. Hulten, Edwin R. Dean and Michael J. Harper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (for NBER).

Downloads: (external link)
http://rcer.econ.rochester.edu/RCERPAPERS/rcer_475.pdf full text (application/pdf)
None

Related works:
Chapter: Accounting for Growth (2001)
Working Paper: Accounting for Growth (1998)
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:roc:rocher:475

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RCER Working Papers from University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER) University of Rochester, Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, Harkness 231 Rochester, New York 14627 U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard DiSalvo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).