Tracking Midwest manufacturing and productivity growth
Philip Israilevich, Kenneth Kuttner, Robert H. Schnorbus
In this article, we explore the reasons for the so-called takeoff in Midwest manufacturing productivity, tracing its growth to significant modernization efforts in several key industries. Investment data and estimates of production models both suggest that productivity gains were higher in the region than in the rest of the nation. We then use the mixed-frequency MMI to assess the quantitative significance of the increased productivity growth for current estimates of Midwest output.
