Data for: Investment-specific technological changes: The source of long-run TFP fluctuations

Abstract of associated article: Technological innovations originating in the capital–producing sector may spillover to the rest of the economy and enhance aggregate TFP in the long-run. This paper assesses the quantitative importance of investment-specific technological changes in long-run movements in aggregate TFP. To this end, we construct a two-sector business cycle model where an IST diffusion process influences long-run movements in aggregate TFP via spillover. We then establish the linkage between the primitive shocks of the model and two shocks that can be identified from a VAR approach: one shock accounting for the long-run movement in aggregate TFP and the other accounting for the long-run movement in the inverse of the relative price of investment. We show analytically that the correlation of these two long-run shocks can be fruitful in distinguishing the quantitative importance of IST innovations in long-run movements in aggregate TFP. Using post-war U.S. data, we find that these two long-run shocks identified by the MFEV approach are almost perfectly collinear. Moreover, these two shocks can explain a significant, and surprisingly similar, fraction of the business-cycle fluctuations in other important macro variables. Our findings suggest that embodied technological changes are an important driver of long-run movements in aggregate TFP.

相关论文摘要：源自资本生产领域的科技创新可能外溢至整个经济体，并在长期内提升总生产率（TFP）。本研究评估了投资特定技术变革在长期总生产率变动中的定量重要性。为此，我们构建了一个双部门经济周期模型，其中内部技术扩散过程通过外溢效应影响长期总生产率的变动。随后，我们建立了模型的基本冲击与从向量自回归（VAR）方法中可识别的两种冲击之间的联系：一种冲击负责解释长期总生产率的变动，另一种冲击负责解释投资相对价格逆的长期变动。我们通过解析证明了这两种长期冲击的相关性在区分长期总生产率变动中内部技术变革的定量重要性方面具有重要意义。利用战后美国数据，我们发现通过最小二乘法估计（MFEV）方法识别的这两种长期冲击几乎完全共线性。此外，这两种冲击能够解释其他重要宏观经济变量商业周期波动中的显著且出人意料的相似部分。我们的研究结果表明，内嵌式技术变革是长期总生产率变动的重要驱动因素。