An analysis of the fundamental determinants of consumer spending on postponable, high-durability goods, such as autos and household equipment, with a discussion of how these determinants apply during 1983-84.

The composition of the U.S. population will change significantly in coming decades as the decline in fertility rates following the baby boom, coupled with increasing longevity, leads to an older population. This demographic shift will likely have a dramatic effect on the long-run prospects for...

In late 2001, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System published the annual revision of its index of industrial production and the related measures of capacity and capacity utilization for the period January 1992 to October 2001. The updated measures reflect the incorporation of...

This paper introduces new estimates of recent productivity developments in the United States, using an appropriate theoretical framework for aggregating industry MFP to sectors and the total economy. Our work sheds light on the sources of the continued strong performance of U.S. productivity...

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System has completed a revision of its measures of output, capacity, and capacity utilization for the industrial sector. The primary feature of the revision is a new formulation for aggregating the indexes and utilization rates based on weights that...

In late 2000, the Federal Reserve Board published the annual revision of its index of industrial production and related measures of capacity and utilization for the period January 1992 through October 2000. The updated measures reflect the incorporation of newly available, more comprehensive...

In late 2002, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System published a revision to its index of industrial production and the related measures of capacity utilization. The primary feature of the revision was the reclassification back to 1972 of production and capacity indexes for...

Business outlays on intangible assets are usually expensed in economic and financial accounts. Following Hulten (1979), this paper develops an intertemporal framework for measuring capital in which consumer utility maximization governs the expenditures that are current consumption versus those...