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Foreword
To an increasing extent long-range problems have been in the forefront of public policy debates over economic issues. Concern over government deficits in the latter part of the 1980s, the long-run financing needs of the social security system, the similar concern over Medicare, the debate over the desirability of what has come to be known as “industrial policy”—all these are problems that require us to look beyond this year or next. Taking the long view is no less important for a better understanding of how our economy works.
Although we look to the long-run growth of productivity to provide us with rising living standards, we still have much to learn about what has caused productivity to increase. Investigators of past productivity growth have invariably come up with a large undigested chunk that has been labeled “technological change” or “increase in knowledge”—or “unexplained residual.”
In the past, investigators of our nation’s economic growth have made no allowance for the fact that our nation’s plant and equipment are being utilized more intensively than in the past because of the spread of late shifts. In 1981 the American Enterprise Institute published a study by Murray F. Foss that showed that manufacturing plants worked 25 percent more hours in a normal week in 1976 than they did in 1929—despite the fact that an average employee worked a much shorter week. The present study demonstrates that this is a continuing development rather than a one-shot occurrence and it is a development that may be found not only in manufacturing but in the nonfarm business economy as a whole. This demonstration means that the effect of longer hours for the stock of fixed capital makes up an identifiable part of the growth in productivity as now measured. The study also demonstrates that in examining key ratios like the ratio of capital to production or that of capital to labor, more meaningful ratios are obtained when taking account of changes in the workweek of capital.
The findings of the present study impinge on such questions as, Do we save and invest enough as a nation? Basic research of this kind also contributes to public policy formation by adding to our understanding of how the economy operates.
William J. Baroody, Jr.
President
American Enterprise Institute
Preface
The number of hours per week worked by the average person in the labor force has declined over the long run and has continued to decline even though the forty-hour week became the standard in this country after the end of World War II. Observing this behavior of the labor workweek, students of U.S. economic growth have raised questions about the behavior of average weekly hours worked by fixed capital. In 1981 the American Enterprise Institute published a study of mine that showed that the number of hours per week worked by manufacturing plants, rather than falling, increased by some 25 percent from 1929 to 1976, as a result of an increase in late-shift work. The first study presented figures for only two years for manufacturing. This study fills in the statistical void between 1929 and 1976 and extends the investigation to sectors outside manufacturing. Although the data for some industries leave much to be desired, the overall results have a large solid core. In any case, the study should be viewed as a beginning in areas either unexplored or little explored in the United States.
These statistics have significance for the way capital is used in this country, for productivity and its growth, and for the growth of output. The utilization of capital has been a topic of interest to economists for some time; indeed, the present study can be viewed as an outgrowth of a study of utilization I did more than twenty years ago.1 Coming at a time that saw the appearance of major works on the nation’s long-term economic growth by Kendrick, Denison, and others, my early investigation gave rise to what I have called the “capital utilization controversy” from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.2 Major new books on shift work have appeared in recent years.3 At the meetings of the American Economic Association in September 1980, a session was devoted to the economics of slack capacity,4 the subject of a recent book by Gordon Winston.5
Although interest in capital utilization has led to active discussion among economists, research on the subject of changing capital utilization in this country at least has been relatively meager. The earlier capital utilization controversy was tabled in effect for lack of data. The main contribution of this book is the information it provides. This study finds that the rise in the workweek of fixed capital in manufacturing documented in my first AEI study has not been a one-time phenomenon but has been part of a continuing trend, which has manifested varying rates of change over the past half-century or so. The workweek of capital of other industries taken as a group has also increased since the end of World War II, although much less than in manufacturing. These findings are a confirmation of a rather common development in this country—the spread of shift work—but a development that economists have largely ignored until recently. These results mean that some of the long-term rise in “total factor productivity” stems from a longer workweek of the capital stock. They are one manifestation of how business has economized in its use of capital in the past, and they shed at least a little new light on productivity growth. where much light remains to be shed.
Whether this kind of economizing on capital will continue in the future will depend on several factors, such as the trend of technology and the added variable costs of operating capital facilities on late shifts. For example, technological developments like the spread of the small, low-cost computer as a substitute for large, costly computers in private business reduces the economic incentive for shift work.
The findings of the study have implications for public policy. For example, a basic tenet of economic policy of the present administration has been the notion that saving in this country has been too low because of excessive taxation and as a consequence fixed investment has been discouraged. A nation that uses its fixed capital efficiently through late-shift work, like the United States, may to that extent be able to tolerate a lower saving rate. This is not the only aspect of economizing on capital. It has been said in the many comparisons between Japan and this country that the Japanese utilize their factory machinery much more effectively than we do.6 They are said to take more care than U.S. businessmen in training their workers to become familiar with new equipment. Knowing more about such topics would provide a stronger basis for public policy regarding capital formation.
The main findings and their significance appear in chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to manufacturing; the former chapter discusses the estimating procedure, and the latter examines the reasonableness of the manufacturing results and the major economic influences on the development of shift work, especially in the period from 1929 to the early post–World War II period. The rest of the study deals with estimation, but the reader may find some of the statistics of interest. Chapter 4 is devoted to those nonmanufacturing industries where the data are most reliable: continuous industries, mining, and retail trade. The fifth and last chapter is devoted to computers and the ways they have affected hours worked by office equipment. Specific appendixes deal with the derivation of overall totals, various nonmanufacturing industries, alternative weighting in the derivation of the overall results, and capital-labor ratios in manufacturing.
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