This paper deals with the early stages of transformation of centrally-planned economies (CBEs) into market economies during which expectations playa key role. It focuses on the transitional phase during which the economy is not any more a CPE but has not yet become a market economy. During this...

Key macro indicators such as output, productivity, and inflation are based on a complex system across multiple statistical agencies using different samples and different levels of aggregation. The Census Bureau collects nominal sales, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects prices, and the...

We develop a model for decomposing the covariance structure of panel data on firms into a part due to permanent heterogeneity, a part due to differential histories with unknown ages, and a part due to the evolution of economic shocks to the firm. Our model allows for the endogenous death of...

We examine two measures of monthly manufacturing production. The first is the index of industrial production; the second is constructed from the accounting identity that output equals sales plus the change in inventories. We show that the means, variances, and serial correlation coefficients of...

A standard statistical perspective on the U.S. Great Inflation is that it involves an increase in the stochastic trend rate of inflation, defined as the long-term forecast of inflation at each point in time. That perspective receives support from two sources: the behavior of long-term interest...

Inefficiency in the U.S. health care system has often been characterized as quot;flat of the curvequot; spending providing little or no incremental value. In this paper, we draw on macroeconomic models of diffusion and productivity to better explain the empirical patterns of outcome improvements...

Why did the Japanese slowdown of the 90s last so long if none of the shocks that hit the Japanese economy had a comparable persistence? In this paper, I use the Comin and Gertler (2006) model of medium term fluctuations to explore whether their endogenous technology mechanisms can amplify and...

The Cliometrics literature on slave efficiency has generally focused on static questions. We take a decidedly more dynamic approach. Drawing on the records of 142 plantations with 509 crops years, we show that the average daily cotton picking rate increased about four-fold between 1801 and 1862....

The US has experienced a sustained increase in productivity growth since the mid-1990s, particularly in sectors that intensively use information technologies (IT). This has not occurred in Europe. If the US quot;productivity miraclequot; is due to a natural advantage of being located in the US...

In this paper we calculate and analyze the automobile industries cost and productivity experience during the 1970 's in Canada, the U.S.and Japan. Utilizing an econometric cost function methodology, we are able to isolate the major source of short-run disequilibrium in this industry-variations'...