TY - JOUR
T1 - Data revisions of aggregate hours worked
T2 - Implications for the europe-U.S. hours gap
AU - Bick, Alexander
AU - Brüggemann, Bettina
AU - Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola
N1 - Funding Information:
Alexander Bick is a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University; Bettina Brüggemann is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at McMaster University; and Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln is a professor of Macroeconomics and Development at Goethe University Frankfurt and a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. The authors thank Valerie Ramey for helpful comments and the encouragement to write this article. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at Goethe University and the European Research Council under Starting Grant No. 262116.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - In this article, we document that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Conference Board’s Total Economy Database (TED) have substantially revised their measures of hours worked over time. Relying on the data used by Rogerson (2006) and Ohanian et al. (2008), we find that, for 2003, hours worked per person in Europe is 18 percent lower than hours worked in the United States. Using the 2016 releases of the same data for 2003 yields a gap that is 40 percent smaller-that is, only 11 percent lower. Using labor force survey data, which are less sub-ject to data revisions, we find a Europe-U.S. hours gap of -19 percent.
AB - In this article, we document that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Conference Board’s Total Economy Database (TED) have substantially revised their measures of hours worked over time. Relying on the data used by Rogerson (2006) and Ohanian et al. (2008), we find that, for 2003, hours worked per person in Europe is 18 percent lower than hours worked in the United States. Using the 2016 releases of the same data for 2003 yields a gap that is 40 percent smaller-that is, only 11 percent lower. Using labor force survey data, which are less sub-ject to data revisions, we find a Europe-U.S. hours gap of -19 percent.
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U2 - 10.20955/r.101.45-56
DO - 10.20955/r.101.45-56
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85066032618
SN - 0014-9187
VL - 101
SP - 45
EP - 56
JO - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review
JF - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review
IS - 1
ER -