IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/revinw/v71y2025i1ne12690.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Productivity Slowdown in Advanced Economies: Common Shocks or Common Trends?

Author

Listed:
  • John Fernald
  • Robert Inklaar
  • Dimitrije Ruzic

Abstract

This paper reviews advanced‐economy productivity developments in recent decades. We focus primarily on the facts about, and explanations for, the mid‐2000s labor‐productivity slowdown in large European countries and the United States. Slower total factor productivity (TFP) growth was the proximate cause of the slowdown. This conclusion is robust to measurement challenges including the role of intangible assets, rankings of productivity levels, and data revisions. We contrast two main narratives for the stagnating TFP frontier: The shock of the Global Financial Crisis; and a common slowdown in TFP trends. Distinguishing these two empirically is hard, but the pre‐recession timing of the U.S. slowdown suggests an important role for the common‐trend explanation. We also discuss the unusual pattern of labor productivity growth since the start of the Covid‐19 pandemic. Although it is early, there is little evidence so far that the large pandemic shock has changed the slow pre‐pandemic trajectory of labor‐productivity growth.

Suggested Citation

  • John Fernald & Robert Inklaar & Dimitrije Ruzic, 2025. "The Productivity Slowdown in Advanced Economies: Common Shocks or Common Trends?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 71(1), February.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:71:y:2025:i:1:n:e12690
    DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12690
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12690
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/roiw.12690?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:71:y:2025:i:1:n:e12690. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iariwea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.