Summary of The Pre-Great Recession Slowdown in Productivity

Gilbert Cette, John G. Fernald and Benoit Mojon

FRBSF, 2016

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The Pre-Great Recession Slowdown in Productivity summary

The world’s developed economies continue to experience low productivity growth.

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Productivity, a long-term driver of economies and incomes, has lagged during the recovery from the Great Recession. However, the 2008 financial crisis isn’t the sole cause of the decline. In fact, the slowdown in productivity improvements in major developed countries was already underway before 2007. This working paper from economists Gilbert Cette, John G. Fernald and Benoit Mojon presents a thorough analysis of the precrisis mechanisms that caused efficiency gains to sputter. getAbstract recommends this authoritative study to policy makers and executives interested in understanding what propels productivity.

In this summary, you will learn

Why productivity has not bounced back in the developed economies since the 2008 financial crisis and
What factors account for the pre-Great Recession global productivity slowdown.

Summary

Economists have been concerned about the slow pace of productivity growth in the United States and Europe since the Great Recession. But a decline was already in progress before the 2008 crisis, suggesting that more than just the financial collapse and its ensuing corrective actions are behind currently...

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About the Authors

Gilbert Cette and Benoit Mojon are economists at the Banque de France. John G. Fernald is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.