the issue of convergence or divergence of productivity has important policy for regional poverty reduction and increasing standards of living. if productivity converges to a common level without intervention, there will be little need for explicit policies in lagging regions to promote the catch up. on the other hand, if productivity undergoes a divergence trend, then explicit policies would be...

The issue of convergence or divergence of productivity has important policy for regional poverty reduction and increasing standards of living. If productivity converges to a common level without intervention, there is little need for explicit policies in lagging regions to promote catch up. On the other hand, productivity has divergence trend, then explicit policies would be needed to prevent f...

the issue of convergence or divergence of productivity has important policy for regional poverty reduction and increasing standards of living. if productivity converges to a common level without intervention, there is little need for explicit policies in lagging regions to promote catch up. on the other hand, productivity has divergence trend, then explicit policies would be needed to prevent f...

T he U.S. economy has been enjoying substantially faster productivity growth for the past eight years than it did over the preceding two decades. From 1995 to 2003, labor productivity rose at an average annual rate of about 3 percent, up from an average annual rate of around 1.5 percent between 1973 and 1995. In both 2002 and 2003, output per hour increased more than 4 percent. The significance...

This paper identifies a new source of business-cycle fluctuations. Namely, a common stochastic trend in neutral and investment-specific productivity. We document that in U.S. postwar quarterly data total factor productivity (TFP) and the relative price of investment are cointegrated. We show theoretically that TFP and the relative price of investment are cointegrated if and only if neutral and ...