US labor and total factor productivity have historically been procyclical — rising in booms and falling in recessions. After the mid-1980s, however, total factor productivity became much less procyclical with respect to hours while labor productivity turned strongly countercyclical. We find...

Historically, U.S. labor productivity (output per hour) and total factor productivity (TFP) rose in booms and fell in recessions. Different models of business cycles explain this procyclicality differently. Traditional Keynesian models relied on \\"factor hoarding,\\" that is, variations in how...