Alternative User Costs, Productivity and Inequality in US Business Sectors

Walter Diewert and Kevin Fox

No 2017-14, Discussion Papers from School of Economics, The University of New South Wales

Abstract: Using the new Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts as well as other BEA data, we construct productivity accounts for two key sectors of the US economy: the Corporate Nonfinancial Sector (Sector 1) and the Noncorporate Nonfinancial Sector (Sector 2). Calculating user costs of capital based on, alternatively, ex post and predicted asset price inflation rates, we provide alternative estimates for capital services and Total Factor Productivity growth for the two sectors. Rates of return on assets employed are also reported for both sectors. In addition, we compare rates of return on assets employed and TFP growth rates when the land and inventory components are withdrawn from the asset base. Finally, implications for labour and capital shares from using alternative income concepts are explored.

Keywords: User cost of capital; Total Factor Productivity; rate of return on assets; Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts; Bureau of Economic Analysis; ex post and ex ante asset inflation rates; US Nonfinancial Sector; Austrian model of production; balancing rates of return; inequality. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B25 C43 C82 D24 E22 E43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/RePEc/papers/2017-14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Alternative User Costs, Productivity and Inequality in US Business Sectors (2018)
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:swe:wpaper:2017-14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from School of Economics, The University of New South Wales Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hongyi Li ().