Abstract
The “mismeasurement hypothesis” holds that the recent slowdown in recorded productivity growth merely reflects a fall-off in our ability to measure productivity rather than an actual deceleration in economic growth, in large part reflecting benefits people gain, but don’t pay for, from using new technology applications. If this hypothesis is valid, we should see that national drops in productivity growth are connected to usage of these services, we should be able to ascertain large gains in surplus related to them, growth in the technology sector should be sharply understated, and labor incomes should be swelling relative to output. None of these arenas show evidence that recent miscounts of aggregate productivity are notably large compared to the past.
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Byrne, David M., John G. Fernald and Marshall B. Reinsdorf. 2016. Does the United States Have a Productivity Slowdown or a Measurement Problem? Brooking Papers on Economic Activity 2016(Spring):109–157.
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Syverson, Chad. 2016. Challenges to Mismeasurement Explanations for the U.S. Productivity Slowdown. NBER Working Paper No. 21974, National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Syverson, C. Does mismeasurement explain low productivity growth?. Bus Econ 52, 99–102 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11369-017-0024-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s11369-017-0024-6