Die deutsche Konjunktur hat sich deutlich abgekuehlt. Das reale Bruttoinlandsprodukt duerfte im ersten Halbjahr 2001 nur noch um 1,3% ueber dem Vorjahr gelegen haben. Ursaechlich dafuer war zum einen die Verlangsamung der Weltkonjunktur und zum anderen der Kaufkraftentzug bei den privaten...

This paper proposes a simple model that formalizes a variant of Ohanian's (2001) conjecture explaining the productivity declines observed in the Great Depression. If a large payment shock like an asset-price collapse renders many firms insolvent, other economic agents become exposed to a higher...

In this paper the time series properties of the outcomes of two different specifications of a nonparametric productivity analysis are compared using data for three- and four- digit U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 1958-96. The first model is standard and does not account for...

This paper presents accounting decompositions of changes in aggregate labor and capital productivity. Our simplest decomposition breaks changes in an aggregate productivity ratio into two components: A mean component, which captures common changes to firm factor productivity ratios, and a...

This paper studies how drilling costs are affected by the business cycle. We decompose the major elements in these costs - rig rates and drilling speed - and examine how they interact with variations in oil prices. A highly relevant consideration in the current circumstances is whether oil...

This paper aims to derive a methodology to decompose aggregate revenue TFP changes over time into four different components - namely physical TFP, mark-ups, quality and production scale. The new methodology is applied to a panel of EU countries and manufacturing industries over the period...

This paper studies the implications of perceived default risk for aggregate output and productivity. Using a model of credit contracts with moral hazard, we show that a firm's probability of default is a sufficient statistic for capital allocation. The theoretical framework suggests an aggregate...

This paper uses cross-country micro-aggregated data on rm dynamics and productivity from the ECB CompNet database to provide empirical evidence on factor reallocation in the EU. The analysis finds that reallocation is towards more productive firms although the magnitude varies across countries...

Exploring and explaining development gaps between countries is an important theoretical and empirical task. This paper presents empirical studies related to economic growth and its determinants across countries, based on the use of data envelopment analysis method. It emphasizes the importance...