Overview

The Division of Productivity Research and Program Development (DPRPD) works on strengthening and improving Bureau productivity measures and on understanding the sources and effects of productivity and technical change. The Division works on clarifying input and output concepts, using methods from microeconomic and macroeconomic theory, labor economics, industrial organization, econometrics, and statistics. Staff time is devoted partly to individual, long term research on theoretical and empirical topics and writing working papers and publications. The Division also works on projects jointly with the other productivity programs. For example, staff members worked with analysts from the Division of Major Sector Productivity to develop more timely measures of multifactor productivity and to determine the effect of labor composition and research and development (R&D;) on productivity growth.

Current research includes:

  • Evaluating the accuracy of estimates of self-employment hours by comparing them to time diaries
  • Developing better R&D measures in each industry
  • Developing measures of manufacturing productivity in each U.S. state
  • Evaluating the accuracy of measures of materials purchased from foreign countries
  • Developing labor composition measures for individual industries
  • Evaluating whether industry productivity measures are comparable across countries

Contact DPRPD

Contact Us

Division Chief

 

Jay Stewart (202) 691-7376 Labor economics; hours measurement; time use research
Research Economists
  Michael Giandrea (202) 691-5628 Sources, effects, and measurement of technological change, retirement patterns among American workers
  Peter Meyer (202) 691-5678 Sources and effects of technological change; occupational classification; economic history; history of technology; invention of the airplane and personal computers
  Sabrina Pabilonia (202) 691-5614 Economics of technological change; self-employment; study of work-life balance; time use research; effects of child gender on parental time allocation; school to work transition; economics of education
  Susan Powers (202) 691-5894 Productivity measurement; technical change; capital measurement; labor economics
  Leo Sveikauskas (202) 691-5677 Research and development; technical change; productivity growth; urban and regional economics; international trade; competitiveness in international trade
  Cindy Zoghi (202) 691-5680 Job design; workers use of technology; labor force skill and demographic composition; economics of higher education; high-involvement workplace practices

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