The conventional wisdom is that the rising productivity in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the 1980s has been driven by the apparently pervasive downsizing over this period. Aggregate evidence clearly shows falling employment accompanying the rise in productivity. In this paper, we examine the...

A longstanding puzzle of empirical economics is that average labor productivity de­clines during recessions and increases during booms. This paper provides a framework to assess the empirical importance of competing hypotheses for explaining the observed pro­cyclicality. For each competing...

A longstanding puzzle of empirical economics is that average labor productivity de­clines during recessions and increases during booms. This paper provides a framework to assess the empirical importance of competing hypotheses for explaining the observed pro­cyclicality. For each competing...