TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fernald, John G
AU  - Hall, Robert E
AU  - Stock, James H
AU  - Watson, Mark W
TI  - The Disappointing Recovery of Output after 2009
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 23543
PY  - 2017
Y2  - June 2017
DO  - 10.3386/w23543
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23543
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23543.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Fernald
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco 
Economic Research Department 
Mailstop 1130 
101 Market Street, 11th floor 
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: 415-974-2135 
Fax: 815-642-0515
E-Mail: fernaldjg@gmail.com

Robert E. Hall
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/723-2215
E-Mail: rehall@gmail.com

James H. Stock
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center M26
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-0502
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: James_Stock@harvard.edu

Mark W. Watson
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-1013
Tel: 609/258-4811
Fax: 609/258-5533
E-Mail: mwatson@princeton.edu
AB  - U.S. output has expanded only slowly since the recession trough in 2009, even though the unemployment rate has essentially returned to a pre-crisis, normal level. We use a growth-accounting decomposition to explore explanations for the output shortfall, giving full treatment to cyclical effects that, given the depth of the recession, should have implied unusually fast growth. We find that the growth shortfall has almost entirely reflected two factors: the slow growth of total factor productivity, and the decline in labor force participation. Both factors reflect powerful adverse forces that are largely unrelated to the financial crisis and recession—and that were in play before the recession.
ER  -