This paper presents an updated estimation of the total factor productivity (TFP) of the U.S. economy following the two preceding empirical studies, Basu et al. (2001) and Burnside et al. (1995). Based on these two estimation approaches, both of which carefully handle the potential estimation...

Since the mid-2000s, Japan's industrial production (IP) has been characterized by increasing volatility. To examine the background to this, we apply the structural factor analysis developed by Foerster, Sarte, and Watson (2011) and decompose variations in Japan's IP into aggregate and sectoral...

A standard growth accounting exercise indicates that, after Japan's "lost decade," its overall total-factor-productivity (TFP) growth has increased notably since 2000. This productivity revival has been limited, however, to information technology (IT) production--has not been a broad-based...

In Japan, like many other industrialized countries, output volatility declined dramatically in the 1980s. In order to investigate the cause of this decline, we decompose the variance of output growth by frequency. Our important findings are: (1) The total variance of output growth decreased,...

In this paper, we estimate time-varying biases of technical change and their effects on productivity using econometric models of aggregate and industry-level technology in Japan. In our aggregate model, the bias of technical change for energy input was energy-saving in the 1980s but gradually...