This paper reviews research that uses longitudinal microdata to document productivity movements and to examine factors behind productivity growth. The research explores the dispersion of productivity across firms and establishments, the persistence of productivity differentials, the consequences...

A common result from altering several fundamental assumptions of the neoclassical investment model with convex adjustment costs is that investment may occur in lumpy episodes. This paper takes a step back and asks "How lumpy is the investment?" We answer this question by documenting the...

This Economic Letter focuses on productivity growth in one area of the economy: the retail trade industry. Although strong productivity growth is often associated with high-tech industries (such as semiconductor manufacturing), the retail sector has enjoyed above average productivity growth and...

This Economic Letter summarizes the papers presented at the conference “Financial Innovations and the Real Economy” held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco by the Bank’s Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity on November 16–17, 2006.

After being the quintessential darling of the nation's economy, the San Francisco Bay Area has been battered by the information technology (IT) downturn; nearly one in ten jobs in the Bay Area has disappeared since the peak of late 2000, and half of those were in the IT sector. This Economic...

For the last fifteen years or so, information technology (IT) has become an ever more important part of the U.S. economy. Looking back over the period, there can be little doubt that the growing use of IT contributed significantly to the economy's performance, especially in the latter half of...

This Economic Letter reports on new research by Doms and Morin (2004) that explores the question of how consumers form their impressions about the economy.