A New Interpretation Of Productivity Growth Dynamics In The Pre Pandemic And Pandemic Era Us Economy 1950 2022

The dismal decade of 2010-19 recorded the slowest productivity growth of any decade in U.S. history, only 1.1 percent per year in the business sector. Yet the pandemic appears to have created a resurgence in productivity growth with a 4.1 percent rate achieved in the four quarters of 2020. This paper provides a unified framework that explains productivity growth in both the pre-pandemic and pandemic-era U.S. economy. The key insight is that in their panicked reaction to the collapse of output in the 2008-09 recession, business firms overreacted with "excess layoffs," adjusting hours to the output decline with a far higher elasticity than normal. Our regression analysis, which allows post-recession rehiring that gradually unwinds the excess layoffs, explains why productivity growth was countercyclical in 2009 and why it was so slow in 2010-16 as rehiring boosted hours growth. Post-sample simulations explain why productivity growth was so high in 2020 and why it fell to only 0.6 percent in the five quarters of 2021-22. The paper includes implications for the future long-term evolution of productivity growth in the business sector and total economy. A new data file on quarterly productivity levels and changes for 17 industries provides new perspectives for 2006-22 and particularly for the nine pandemic quarters of 2020-22. Positive pandemic-era productivity growth can be entirely explained by a surge in the performance of work-from-home service industries, while goods industries soared and then slumped, while contact services recorded strongly negative productivity growth throughout 2020-22.

We study U.S. labor productivity growth and its drivers since the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor productivity experienced large swings since 2020, due to both compositional and within-industry effects, but has since returned to its pre-pandemic trend. Industry-level panel regressions show that measures of labor market churn are associated with higher productivity growth both in the cross-section and over time. Sectors with higher investment in digitalization, particularly in teleworkable industries, also experience higher productivity growth on average. There has also been an increase in business formation since the pandemic, but its impact on productivity dynamics will likely need more time to be reflected in the data.

Discover the surprising case for how conservatism can help us achieve the epic sci-fi future we were promised. America was once the world’s dream factory. We turned imagination into reality, from curing polio to landing on the Moon to creating the internet. And we were confident that more wonders lay just over the horizon: clean and infinite energy, a cure for cancer, computers and robots as humanity’s great helpers, and space colonies. (Also, of course, flying cars.) Science fiction, from The Jetsons to Star Trek, would become fact. But as we moved into the late 20th century, we grew cautious, even cynical, about what the future held and our ability to shape it. Too many of us saw only the threats from rapid change. The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Great Downshift in technological progress and economic growth, followed by decades of economic stagnation, downsized dreams, and a popular culture fixated on catastrophe: AI that will take all our jobs if it doesn’t kill us first, nuclear war, climate chaos, plague and the zombie apocalypse. We are now at risk of another half-century of making the same mistakes and pushing a pro-progress future into the realm of impossibility. But American Enterprise Institute (AEI) economic policy expert and long-time CNBC contributor James Pethokoukis argues that there’s still hope. We can absolutely turn things around—if we the people choose to dream and act. How dare we delay or fail to deliver for ourselves and our children. With groundbreaking ideas and sharp analysis, Pethokoukis provides a detailed roadmap to a fantastic future filled with incredible progress and prosperity that is both optimistic and realistic. Through an exploration of culture, economics, and history, The Conservative Futurist tells the fascinating story of what went wrong in the past and what we need to do today to finally get it right. Using the latest economic research and policy analysis, as well as insights from top economists, historians, and technologists, Pethokoukis reveals that the failed futuristic visions of the past were totally possible. And they still are. If America is to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, take full advantage of emerging tech from generative AI to CRISPR to reusable rockets, and launch itself into a shining tomorrow, it must again become a fully risk-taking, future-oriented society. It’s time for America to embrace the future confidently, act boldly, and take that giant leap forward.

This book charts the fall of productivity growth and the rise of inequality within global economies and societies. Set out through a series of economic models, the impact of falling rates of productivity growth, particularly in the USA, are examined in relation to lowering interest rates, the lifting of the stock market, and an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth. The economic impact of COVID-19, including the increased tendency to work from home and renewed public debt pressures, are contextualised within broader issues of wage suppression and discontent within the labor force to highlight how average workers have been left behind. The rise of China and the geopolitical tensions that it has created is also discussed. This book sets out the macro and microeconomic innovations that can create a revival in productivity growth in the coming years. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in global economic trends and the political economy.

Between 1948 and 1979, economic activity in the United States increased almost twice as much as over the entire preceding course of American history. The traditional explanation of this remarkable development emphasizes productivity growth. In the most sophisticated study to date of the factors currently affecting economic growth, the authors of this book show that capital formation is far more important, with the growth of labor resources and productivity a distant second. Their conclusions rest on a far more detailed empirical base than any ever assembled in studies of economic growth. For example, the authors distinguish among 81,600 types of labor input -- broken down by age, sex, education, occupation, and industry of employment. Similarly, they disaggregate capital by industry, class of asset, and tax treatment. Their analysis of economic growth is from the "bottom up'' rather than the "top down'' approach used in earlier work. The new findings imply that efforts to revive U.S. economic growth must focus on increased supplies of capital and labor inputs. This is the key to more rapid growth and international competition. One of the most important features of the book is the way in which it successfully integrates the theory of producer behavior with the indexing and measurement of production growth. The authors present startling new findings showing that less than one-fourth of overall growth is attributable to advances in productivity.

Investors who ignore the past are lost in the present and blind to the future. Most people rely only on their life experience to make investment decisions. This causes them to overlook cyclical forces that repeatedly reshape economies and markets. Investing in U.S. Financial History fills this void by recounting the comprehensive financial history of the United States of America. It begins with Alexander Hamilton’s financial programs in 1790 and ends with the Federal Reserve’s battle with inflation in 2023. Authored by Mark Higgins, an experienced investment advisor and financial historian, this book will help you: • Understand key drivers of financial crises and the principles for managing them. • Recognize warning signs of speculative manias that lead to asset bubbles. • Understand why few investors outperform market indices and why index funds are preferable for most individuals and institutions. • Identify the major threats to U.S. economic prosperity in the twenty-first century. Investing in U.S. Financial History reveals that there is almost no financial event that is unprecedented. By understanding the fundamental drivers underpinning key economic events, you will internalize investment principles, avoid common pitfalls, and resist the temptation to panic amid market volatility.

A comprehensive and insightful look at the modern workplace and how employees are managed, where the new approach is driven by the quirks of financial accounting to the detriment of employees and the long-term success of the organization. Real wages have stagnated or declined for most workers, job insecurity has increased, and retirement income is uncertain. Hours of work for white collar employees have increased steadily, opportunities for advancement have withered, and evidence of the negative effects of workplace stress on health continues to accumulate. Why have jobs gotten so much worse? As Peter Cappelli argues, these issues are not a result of companies trying to be cost effective. They stem from the logic of financial accounting--the arbiter for determining whether a company is maximizing shareholder value--and its fundamental flaws in dealing with human capital. Financial accounting views employee costs as fixed costs that cannot be reduced and fails to account for the costs of bad employees and poor management. The simple goal of today's executives is to drive down employment costs, even if it raises costs elsewhere. In Our Least Important Asset, Cappelli argues that the financial accounting problem explains many puzzling practices in contemporary management--employers' emphasis on costs per hire over the quality of hires, the replacement of regular employees with "leased" workers, the shift to unlimited vacations, and the transition of hiring responsibilities from professional recruiters to more expensive line managers. In the process, employers undercut all the evidence about what works to improve the quality, productivity, and creativity of workers. Drawing on decades of experience and research, Cappelli provides a comprehensive and insightful critique of the modern workplace where the gaps in financial accounting make things worse for everyone, from employees to investors.

New goods are at the heart of economic progress. The eleven essays in this volume include historical treatments of new goods and their diffusion; practical exercises in measurement addressed to recent and ongoing innovations; and real-world methods of devising quantitative adjustments for quality change. The lead article in Part I contains a striking analysis of the history of light over two millenia. Other essays in Part I develop new price indexes for automobiles back to 1906; trace the role of the air conditioner in the development of the American south; and treat the germ theory of disease as an economic innovation. In Part II essays measure the economic impact of more recent innovations, including anti-ulcer drugs, new breakfast cereals, and computers. Part III explores methods and defects in the treatment of quality change in the official price data of the United States, Canada, and Japan. This pathbreaking volume will interest anyone who studies economic growth, productivity, and the American standard of living.

World Inequality Report 2022 is the most authoritative and comprehensive account of global trends in inequality, providing cutting-edge information about income and wealth inequality and also pioneering data about the history of inequality, gender inequality, environmental inequalities, and trends in international tax reform and redistribution.