期刊名称：Discussion Paper / U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies
出版年度：2007
卷号：2007
出版社：U.S. Census Bureau
摘要：This paper provides new evidence that estimates based on aggregate data will understate the true procyclicality of total factor productivity. I examine plant-level data and show that some industries experience countercyclical reallocations of output shares among firms at different points in the business cycle, so that during recessions, less productive firms produce less of the total output, but during expansions they produce more. These reallocations cause overall productivity to rise during recessions, and do not reflect the actual path of productivity of a representative firm over the course of the business cycle. Such an effect (sometimes called the cleansing effect of recessions) may also bias aggregate estimates of returns to scale and help explain why decreasing returns to scale are found at the industry-level data.
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