ABR: The Measurement of 20th Century U. S. Economic Growth

在二十世纪，美国经济经历了中期内多要素生产率(MFP)增长的急剧加速和减速。这种加速、减速和再加速的模式一直是关于本世纪初增长来源、1972年后生产率增长放缓和1995年后生产率增长复苏的许多假说的起点。该项目旨在开展测量项目，以质疑自19世纪末以来美国MFP增长的长期变化的幅度和时间。研究计划分为两个不同的部分。(1)第二次世界大战前的标准MFP数据与官方战后政府数据不一致，没有根据不断变化的投入质量进行调整，需要针对资本投入衡量中的问题进行进一步调整。(2)在这位研究人员所说的“胡尔顿-布鲁格尔悖论”中，事实上的不一致困扰着任何试图向后推断1996年博斯金委员会报告的那种幅度的向上价格指数偏差的尝试。这种向后推算意味着，如果追溯到足够远的地方，例如两个世纪，实际消费水平低得令人难以置信。这一悖论提出了这样一种可能性，即在一段时间内，主要产品的价格指数可能出现了零甚至下降的偏向。对主题(1)的研究现已完成，并得出了惊人的结论。新的MFP指标显示，1928-50年期间的增长高峰要少得多，快速增长时期进一步追溯到1891年，之前令人费解的产出-资本比率行为得到了解决。该项目的主要重点现在转向了价格衡量。政府价格指数的偏差通常被认为是向上的，也就是夸大了通胀。这个项目的新奇之处在于探索了通胀在前几十年可能被低估(或高估了很少)的可能性。到目前为止，这种可能性还没有得到系统的调查，这意味着在生产率快速增长的黄金时代，MFP增长可能被夸大了。住房服务(包括租金和住房所有权)是拟议研究的中心重点，其目的是制定从第一次世界大战至今整个时期住房价格和质量变化的新指数。已发现的几个数据来源表明，官方住宅租金CPI可能大幅低估了经质量调整的租金的通胀，尤其是在1925年至1975年期间。官方CPI是国民收入账户中住房拥有率下降的基础。住宅住房质量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30年来建筑业生产率负增长的谜题。该提案还提供了证据，表明CPI可能低估了服装的历史通胀率，服装是消费者支出的另一个重要组成部分。将支付的平均价格和享乐指数与来自同一数据来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中的速度快得多。

During the twentieth century the U. S. economy experienced sharp accelerations and decelerations in the growth of multi-factor productivity (MFP) over medium-term intervals. This pattern of acceleration, deceleration, and reacceleration has been the point of departure for numerous hypotheses about the sources of growth earlier in the century, about the post-1972 productivity growth slowdown, and about the post-1995 productivity growth revival.This project aims to carry out measurement projects that question the magnitude and timing of long-term changes in MFP growth in the U. S. since the late nineteenth century. There are two separate parts to the research plan. (1) Standard MFP data prior to World War II are not consistent with official postwar government series, have not been adjusted for the changing quality of inputs, and require further adjustment for problems in the measurement of capital input. (2) In what the investigator called the "Hulten-Bruegel Paradox," a factual inconsistency plagues any attempt to extrapolate backward an upward price index bias of the magnitude reported by the 1996 Boskin commission. Such backward extrapolation implies implausibly low levels of real consumption if one goes back far enough, e.g., two centuries. The paradox raises the possibility that for some time intervals, price indexes for major products may have had a zero or even downward bias.Research on topic (1) has now been completed with striking conclusions. New measures of MFP show much less of a peak in growth during 1928-50, the period of rapid growth extends back further to 1891, and the puzzling previous behavior of the output-capital ratio is resolved. The main emphasis in the project now turns to price measurement. Bias in government price indexes is normally assumed to be upward, that is, overstating inflation. The novelty in this project is to explore the possibility that inflation may have been understated (or overstated by substantially less) in earlier decades. This possibility, which has not heretofore been systematically investigated, implies that MFP growth may have been overstated in the golden era when measured productivity growth was rapid. Shelter services (both rent and homeownership) are the central focus of the proposed 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. Several sources of data have been uncovered that suggest 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 1925 and 1975. 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 proposal 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 and hedonic indexes 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.