TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ireland,Peter N.
AU  - Schuh,Scott
TI  - Productivity and U.S. Macroeconomic Performance: Interpreting the Past and Predicting the Future with a Two-Sector Real Business Cycle Model
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13532
PY  - 2007
Y2  - October 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13532
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13532.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Peter N. Ireland
Boston College
Department of Economics
140 Commonwealth Ave.
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3859
Tel: 617/552-3687
Fax: 617/552-2308
E-Mail: irelandp@bc.edu

Scott Schuh
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
600 Atlantic Avenue, T-9
Boston, MA  02210
Tel: 617-973-3941
Fax: 617-619-7541
E-Mail: Scott.Schuh@bos.frb.org
AB  - A two-sector real business cycle model, estimated with postwar U.S. data, identifies shocks to the levels and growth rates of total factor productivity in distinct consumption- and investment-goods-producing technologies. This model attributes most of the productivity slowdown of the 1970s to the consumption-goods sector; it suggests that a slowdown in the investment-goods sector occurred later and was much less persistent. Against this broader backdrop, the model interprets the more recent episode of robust investment and investment-specific technological change during the 1990s largely as a catch-up in levels that is unlikely to persist or be repeated anytime soon.
ER  -