This chapter presents the major results of a comparative study of productivity growth in manufacturing in Japan and the United States conducted by the authors at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Japan was chosen for the comparison because the growth of productivity there has been extraordinary...

This paper analyzes multifactor productivity growth (based on capital, labor, energy, and materials) and labor productivity growth in the Japanese and U.S. manufacturing sectors. We find that the tests of separability required for a value-added approach fail for both the U.S. and Japan, making...

Production capital and technology, fundamental to understanding output and productivity growth, are unobserved except at disaggregated levels and must be estimated prior to being used in empirical analysis. We develop and apply a new estimation method, based on advances in economics, statistics,...

Research Summary: Firm size has long been recognized as a source of competitive advantage. However, the disruptions arising from the knowledge-based global economy are decoupling the link between firm size and profitability. We demonstrate in this article, the structural shifts and evolving...

This paper explores the impact of globalization on some determinants of per worker labor productivity in U.S. manufacturing industries. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and trade liberalization are examined as two main drivers of globalization in this study. The estimation...

early life interventions, intergenerational mobility, parental investments, fertility, health care provisionAAn important gap in most empirical studies of establishment-level productivity is the limited information about workers' characteristics and their tasks. Skill-adjusted labor input...

Production capital and technology, fundamental to understanding output and productivity growth, are unobserved except at disaggregated levels and must be estimated prior to being used in empirical analysis. We develop and apply a new estimation method, based on advances in economics, statistics,...

Real value-added per employee in U.S. manufacturing fell between 2010 and 2016. Manufacturing accounted for over half the drop in private economy productivity growth between 1990-2000 and 2010-2016, though it accounted for less than 20% of aggregate value-added. While productivity growth fell in...

During the post-1970 period, Canadian manufacturing prices have alternately increased and fallen relative to U.S. prices - just the reverse of the cycle in the Canada - U.S. exchange rate. But not all manufacturing industries have experienced the same amplitude of relative price changes. This...