Jim Malley

Productivity Shocks and Aggregate Cycles in an Estimated Endogenous Growth Model

Using a two-sector endogenous growth model, this paper explores how productivity shocks in the goods and human capital producing sectors contribute to explaining aggregate cycles in output, consumption, investment and hours. To contextualize our findings, we also assess whether the human capital model or the standard real business cycle (RBC) model better explains the observed variation in these aggregates. We find that while neither of the workhorse growth models uniformly dominates the other across all variables and forecast horizons, the two-sector model provides a far better fit to the data. Some other key results are first, that Hicks-neutral shocks explain a greater share of output and consumption variation at shorter-forecast horizons whereas human capital productivity innovations dominate at longer ones. Second, the combined explanatory power of the two technology shocks in the human capital model is greater than the Hicks-neutral shock in the RBC model in the medium- and long-term for output and consumption. Finally, the RBC model outperforms the two-sector model with respect to explaining the observed variation in investment and hours.

A Sectoral Analysis of Price-Setting Behavior in US Manufacturing Industries

In this paper we estimate New Keynesian Phillips curves (NKPC) for U.S. manufacturing industries defined at the SIC two digit level over the period 1959 to 1996. This enables us to measure the extent of nominal inertia across industrial sectors. A key innovation in this research is the use of intermediate-goods costs rather than labor costs as a measure of marginal costs. Intermediate-goods costs are a more significant element of costs for the firms populating our sample and are not subject to the criticism that wage rates are nonallocative. We find that there is statistically significant variability in estimates of price stickiness, ranging from eight months to two years. We also find that estimates of backward-looking price-setting behavior vary, with some industries characterized by 81 of pricing decisions made in a purely forward-looking manner, while in others only 52 of pricing decisions are made that way. Market concentration (as captured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index) appears to be associated with increased price stickiness, but reduced rule-of-thumb behavior, in setting prices. Finally, firms are also more likely to follow simple rules of thumb when output in their industry is more volatile.

A non-parametric approach to non-linear causality testing

In this paper we propose a new procedure for causality testing using non-parametric additive models. Our results suggest that the major advantage of our method is that it can be applied if the underlying data generation process is either linear or non-linear.

Does Government Employment "Crowd-Out" Private Employment?: Evidence from Sweden

It is argued that increases in government spending that take the form of increases in government employment can have a negative impact on private-sector employment by increasing real wages. In fact, once the supply reducing effects of higher taxes needed to finance the increase in government employment are taken into account, the fall in private employment can be so large as to cause decreases in aggregate employment. The authors demonstrate this with quarterly Swedish data for the period 1964-90. Copyright 1996 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

Excess Labour and the Business Cycle: A Comparative Study of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States

Against the background of firm-specific human capital theory, this paper investigates empirically the relative propensity of manufacturing industries in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to hold excess labor over the business cycle. Both stock and utilization dimensions of the labor input are integrated into the study. Throughout, discussion is linked to earlier research that has analyzed the relative international performance of the Japanese labor market. Copyright 1996 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Procyclical Labour Productivity: A Closer Look at a Stylized Fact

At 4-digit United States manufacturing industry level, we find evidence suggesting that the stylized fact of procyclical labour productivity should be treated with great caution. We use the NBER Manufacturing Productivity database to investigate the relationship between hourly labour productivity and real output for 450 industries for the years 1958-91. Labour productivity is significantly procyclical in 63% of industries and acyclical in 36%. In the latter respect, a high proportion of investment goods industries display acyclical productivity. Cross-section regressions are carried out that seek to explain the interindustry distribution of cyclicality. The analysis attributes a significant role to variations in materials costs, as a proxy for fluctuations in factor utilization. Copyright 1999 by The London School of Economics and Political Science

Real business cycles, sticky wages or sticky prices? The impact of technology shocks on US manufacturing

In this paper, we examine empirically the predictions of a range of theoretical models which give a prominent role to technology shocks in explaining business cycles. To this end, we estimate (4-digit SIC) industry-level VAR models for US manufacturing using real output, the real wage and utilization corrected measures of technology and labor input. Our results support both sticky-wage DGE and RBC models over sticky-price DGE models. Moreover, they cast some doubt on the importance of technology shocks as propulsive mechanism for business cycles at the industry level.

Some new international comparisons of productivity performance at the sectoral level

We present several new measures of gross-output-based total factor productivity (TFP) at the sectoral level for manufacturing industries in the G-7 economies. We calculate measures of both TFP growth and comparative levels. These are obtained by combining conventional Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sectoral data on labour and capital inputs with data on intermediate inputs from national input-output tables. Additionally, we derive cyclically corrected measures of TFP growth. Our evidence shows that the considerable gap in TFP between the USA and other G-7 economies is closing but remains significant. Copyright 2003 Royal Statistical Society.

The Interaction Between Business Cycles and Productivity Growth: Evidence from US Industrial Data

In this paper, we employ total factor productivity data adjusted for factor utilisation over the cycle, to model the dynamic interaction between TFP and employment. Our data spans twenty 2-digit SIC code manufacturing sectors in the US. There are two key results. First, we show that the impact of technology shocks on employment cycles is much weaker than suggested by real business cycle-type models, and that in a number of cases employment responds negatively to technology shocks. Second, in examining the impact of employment shocks on TFP, we find some evidence for both opportunity cost and learning-by-doing effects.

Testing For Tax Smoothing In A General Equilibrium Model Of Growth

This paper constructs and formally tests a general equilibrium model of long-term growth and endogenous fiscal policy. In this model policymakers find it optimal to keep the income tax rate constant over time. Tax revenues finance public consumption and public production services, with the latter generating long-term growth. Surprisingly, despite its popularity amongst theorists, there have thus far been no formal econometric tests of this Barro-type general equilibrium model. We find that data from 22 OECD economies uniformly reject this model over the period 1960- 1996.