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The Workweek of Capital and Capital Utilization in Manufacturing

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Abstract

Over the typical intervals of time studied in economic analysis, the flow of capital services is not a fixed proportion of the capital stock. Much of the short-run variation in capital services comes from the duration of operations. This paper presents new estimates of the workweek of capital from the Census Bureau' Survey of Plant Capacity (SPC), both for our own analytical use and to make workweek data more widely available to other researchers. The paper uses these workweek estimates to reconsider various results in the literature on capital utilization and productivity growth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Mail Stop 82, Washington, D.C, 20551

    J. Joseph Beaulieu

  2. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 101 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105

    Joe Mattey

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  1. J. Joseph Beaulieu
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Beaulieu, J.J., Mattey, J. The Workweek of Capital and Capital Utilization in Manufacturing. Journal of Productivity Analysis 10, 199–223 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018629508255

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