Knowledge that Transforms

This paper provides a consistent international comparison of the patterns of growth in Canadian and U.S. industries. While much previous work has been done comparing sectoral (total factor) productivity in these two countries, the methods are not entirely comparable. Our approach here is to use methods and definitions that are almost identical for the two countries and therefore to provide a better sense of the relative productivity performance of the two countries. Our methodology for international comparisons of growth in output, inputs, and productivity is based on the economic theory of production. We use measures of labor and capital that take into account the changing composition of the labor force and capital stocks (relatively more educated and older workers, and relatively more equipment compared to structures). We find that, during the 1961–1973 period, Canadian industries were able to bring their productivity levels closer to U.S. levels, and they also had a higher rate of output growth. However, the growth in output and productivity slowed down after 1973 in both countries. As a result, the gap in the level of productivity between the Canadian and U.S. industries has remained virtually unchanged since 1973. Looking closely at the sources of industrial output growth, we find that input growth is the predominant source of the growth for almost all industries in the two countries over the 1961– 1995 period. Productivity growth contributes, on average, only about 20 percent of the growth of industrial output in the two countries over this period.

Exchange-rate regimes in transition economies over the last decade have spanned the entire spectrum of possibilities, going from freely floating to permanently fixed (currency boards, DM-ization) through managed floats, preannounced crawling rates, and bands with or without intermittent adjustments. Such extreme diversity is due to differences in available foreign reserves and in initial macroeconomic imbalances (especially the presence of a monetary overhang in some transition economies) and to differences in government preferences between inflation and unemployment. Performance of alternative exchange-rate regimes is difficult to assess, (i) because performance can be mixed, (ii) because all exchange regimes if sustained have a tendency to validate themselves via their impact on inflation, and above all, (iii) because performance depends on the entire package of public policy instruments (fiscal, monetary, and structural) and on exogenous factors, as well as the exchange-rate regime itself.

This paper examines the generational aspect of the current Medicare system and some stylized reforms. We find that the rates of return on Medicare for today's workers are higher than those for Social Security and that the Medicare system is shifting a greater share of the burden on future workers than is Social Security. Nonetheless, the rates of return on Medicare, using the Medicare Trustees assumptions, are still not that high--roughly 2 percent for today's youngest workers. But forecasting future Medicare expenditures is quite difficult. Under an alternative higher-cost baseline, which we consider plausible, rates of return for today's youngest workers will exceed 3 percent. Putting Medicare on a sustainable basis by raising the payroll tax or reducing benefits would greatly reduce the rate of return for today's workers. Under the Trustees assumptions, for example, the payroll tax would have to be increased by 2.0 percent of payroll to put the Medicare system in balance in perpetuity. This policy would reduce the rate of return on today's youngest workers to about 1.3 percent.

The Japanese banking crisis provides a natural experiment to test whether a loan supply shock can affect real economic activity. Because the shock was external to U.S. credit markets, yet connected through the Japanese bank penetration of U.S. markets, this event allows us to identify an exogenous loan supply shock and ultimately link that shock to construction activity in U.S. commercial real estate markets. We exploit the variation across geographically distinct commercial real estate markets to establish conclusively that loan supply shocks emanating from Japan had real effects on economic activity in the United States.

This study uses household-level data from the United States and Mexico to examine labor-market integration. I consider how the effects of shocks and rates of convergence to an equilibrium differential are affected by borders, geography, and demographics. I find that even though a large wage differential exists between them, the labor markets of the United States and Mexico are closely integrated. Mexico's border region is more integrated with the United States than is the Mexican interior. Evidence of integration precedes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and may be largely the result of migration.

Contributions to 401(k) plans are now the most important form of retirement saving. Since 401(k) plans were introduced in the early 1980’s, they have expanded rapidly and continuously. By 1998, roughly half of all households were eligible to participate in 401(k) plans, and more than 36 million workers made contributions to these employer-provided saving plans. In 1995, the last year for which the U.S. Department of Labor has released definitive data, 401(k) contributions amounted to $87.4 billion, or 55 percent of all contributions to employer-sponsored pension plans. The level of contributions, and their share of all pension contributions, is probably significantly higher today. The spread of 401(k) plans is the most important indicator of the move to personal retirement saving. In 1980, almost 92 percent of pension-plan contributions were to traditional employer-provided plans, and about 64 percent of these contributions were to conventional defined-benefit plans. Today, almost 60 percent of contributions are to personal retirement accounts, including 401(k), IRA, and Keogh plans. Including employerprovided, non-401(k) defined-contribution plans, over 76 percent of contributions are to plans that are controlled in large measure by individuals. These individuals make participation, contribution, asset-allocation, and withdrawal decisions. In this paper, we describe the likely importance of 401(k) assets for future older Americans and the effect of investment decisions on asset accumulation. We also examine the extent to which retirement assets may be affected by several decisions: preretirement withdrawals, management fees and expenses, contribution rates, and early retirement. Our analysis focuses on 401(k) saving, but applies more broadly to other forms of individual retirement saving.

This paper studies the business-cycle fluctuations predicted by a two-sector endogenous-business-cycle model with sector-specific external increasing returns to scale. It focuses on aspects of actual fluctuations that have been identified both as defining features of business cycles and as ones standard real-business-cycle models cannot explain. For empirically realistic calibrations of the degree of returns to scale, the results suggest that endogenous fluctuations do not provide the dynamic element that is missing in existing real-business-cycle models.