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Testing for Recent Trends in US Productivity Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Simon van Norden

    (HEC Montreal, CIRANO and CIREQ)

Abstract

There is no shortage of opinions and discussion about recent productivity growth trends. In contrast, relatively little attention is paid to the degree of uncertainty surrounding recent estimates of such growth trends. This paper makes two contributions to the scant body of research that quantifies the precision with which such trends are estimated. It proposes a new test for recent breaks in trend when the breakpoint is not precisely known. The test is robust to departures from normality, reasonably sized in small samples, has the power to detect economically significant changes in productivity growth, and can be used to test for breakpoints with as little as a single observation. It examines the impact of data revision on the reliablity of tests for trend breaks using a new real-time data set for US Output per Person-Hour in the Non-Farm Business Sector recently made available by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Board. As noted by Arouba (2005), data revision in productivity data seems to be larger than in many other macroeconomic series (including output, inflation or unemployment.) We find that the failure to take account of the data revision process causes important distortions in tests for trend breaks

Suggested Citation

  • Simon van Norden, 2006. "Testing for Recent Trends in US Productivity Growth," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 177, Society for Computational Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:sce:scecfa:177
    as

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    real-time data; breaking trends; productivity growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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