Bartelsman, E. and Wolf, Z. (2014). Forecasting Aggregate Productivity using Information from Firm-level Data Review of Economics and Statistics, 96(4):745--755.
-
Affiliated authorsEric Bartelsman, Zoltan Wolf
-
Publication year2014
-
JournalReview of Economics and Statistics
In this paper, we explore whether information from firm-level data can improve forecasts of aggregate productivity growth. We generate firm-level productivity measures and aggregate them into time-series components that capture within-firm productivity and the productivity contribution of reallocation. We showthat these components improve aggregate total factor productivity forecasts in a simple univariate setting, even when firm-level data are available with a time lag. Lagged firm-level information also improves aggregate productivity forecasts when we combine results from a variety of different multivariate forecasting models using Bayesian model averaging techniques.