Problems in the Measurement of Prices and Productivity

美国经济增长缓慢。S.与前半个世纪更快的增长相比，过去25年的劳动生产率构成了备受讨论的“生产率放缓”。到目前为止，任何基于单一原因的理论都无法解释经济放缓，比如能源价格、资本投资、基础设施投资、政府监管和教育考试成绩。最近，人们的注意力集中在对价格变化的错误衡量可能部分或主要解释经济放缓的可能性上。人们已经认识到，产出增长现在比以前更难衡量，部分原因是计算机正在产生无法衡量的无形效益，因此，与经济放缓之前相比，近几十年来通货膨胀被夸大，生产率增长被低估。 这个项目的新奇在于，通过探索在经济放缓之前的几十年里通货膨胀可能被低估（或被高估得更少）的可能性，将假设的偏见方向颠倒过来。这种可能性迄今尚未得到系统的研究，这意味着在黄金时代（1915年至1972年），生产率的增长可能被夸大了。如果这一假设得到这项研究的支持，它将至少部分地解释经济放缓，因为它表明近几十年来的生产率增长与黄金时代相比并不像以前认为的那样糟糕。 为该项目制定的一套研究标准导致选择住房服务（租金和住房所有权）作为研究的中心焦点，其目的是制定新的价格和质量变化指数，从第一次世界大战至今。该项目揭示了几个数据来源，这些数据表明，作为国民收入账户中房屋所有权通缩基础的官方住宅租金CPI可能大大低估了质量调整租金的通胀，特别是在1930年至1970年期间。对住宅住房质量的研究的一个有用的副产品将是提供新的信息，以重新评估过去三十年来建筑业生产率负增长的难题。对住房价格的研究将使用若干技术来汇编关于住房质量和价格的数据。几个鲜为人知的研究，涵盖1930 - 1970年期间可以向前和向后延伸，使用数据的出租公寓和房屋的质量特点，从行业来源和消费者支出调查的前几年，以及现有的政府数据，从住房普查和目前的住房报告为最近的时期。将使用方差分析或特征回归方法分析数据，将新的估计值与先前研究的系数相结合。 该研究还提供证据表明，CPI可能低估了服装的历史通胀率，这是消费者支出的另一个重要组成部分。将平均价格与来自同一数据源的匹配模型指数进行比较，表明服装通胀率可能比匹配模型指数或CPI快得多。如果这种可能性通过对长期历史间隔内服装价格的特征回归研究得到验证，那么它将在改变美国住房价格的标准历史数据方面加强对住房价格的研究。S.产出和生产率的增长，可能降低了第一次世界大战和1970年之间的生产率增长，从而解释了1970年后生产率增长放缓的部分原因。服装研究还可能意味着，可能需要重新审查以前其他产品的匹配模型指数，以及基于模型变化之间联系的许多CPI组成部分。

The slow rate of growth in U. S. labor productivity in the last 25 years, in contrast to much faster growth in the previous half century, constitutes the much discussed `productivity slowdown.` Thus far the slowdown has eluded explanation by any theory based on a single cause, such as the behavior of energy prices, capital investment, infrastructure investment, government regulation, and educational test scores. More recently attention has focussed on the possibility that mis-measurement of price changes may partly or largely explain the slowdown. It has been conjectured that output growth is now more difficult to measure than previously, partly because computers are producing unmeasured intangible benefits, and as a result that inflation has been overstated and productivity growth understated more in recent decades than prior to the slowdown. The novelty in this project is to turn the presumed direction of bias upside down by exploring the possibility that inflation may have been understated (or overstated by substantially less) in earlier decades prior to the slowdown. This possibility, which has not heretofore been systematically investigated, implies that productivity growth may have been overstated in the golden era (spanning the period between 1915 and 1972) when measured productivity growth was rapid. If this hypothesis is supported by this research, it would explain the slowdown at least in part by showing that productivity growth in recent decades does not compare so badly with that in the golden era as has previously been thought. A set of research criteria developed for this project leads to the choice of shelter services (both rent and homeownership) as the central focus of the research, the aim of which is to develop new indexes of price and quality change for shelter over the full period from World War I to date. The project uncovers several sources of data suggesting that the official CPI for residential rent, which is the basis for the deflation of home ownership in the national income accounts, may substantially understate inflation in quality adjusted rents, particularly between 1930 and 1970. A useful byproduct of the research on the quality of residential shelter will be to provide new information to reassess the puzzle of negative productivity growth in the construction industry over the past three decades. The study of shelter prices will use several techniques to compile data on housing quality and prices. Several little-known studies covering the 1930 1970 period can be extended forward and backwards, using data on quality characteristics of rental apartments and houses from industry sources and consumer expenditure surveys for the earlier years, and existing government data from the Census of Housing and Current Housing Reports for the more recent period. Data will be analyzed using the analysis of variance or the hedonic regression approach, combining new estimates with coefficients from previous studies. The research also provides evidence that the CPI may understate the historic inflation rate for apparel, another important component of consumer expenditure. Comparisons of average prices paid with matched model indexes from the same data source suggest the possibility of a much more rapid rate of apparel inflation than in the matched model indexes or in the CPI. If this possibility is validated by a hedonic regression study of apparel prices over long historical intervals, it would augment the research on shelter prices in altering the standard historical data on U. S. output and productivity growth, potentially reducing the growth of productivity between World War I and 1970 and thus explaining part of the post 1970 productivity growth slowdown. The apparel research may also imply that previous matched model indexes for other products, as well as the many CPI components based on linking across model changes, may need to be reexamined.