The Quantitative Role of Capital Goods Imports in US Growth

Over the last 40 years, an increasing share of U.S. aggregate E&S investment expenditure has been allocated to capital-goods imports. While capital-goods imports were only 3.5 percent of E&S investment in 1967, by 2008 their share had risen tenfold to 36 percent. The goal of this paper is to measure the contribution of capital-goods imports to growth in U.S. output per hour using a simple growth accounting exercise. We find that capital-goods imports have contributed 20 to 30 percent to growth in U.S. output per hour between 1967 and 2008. More importantly, we find that capital-goods imports have been an increasing source of growth for the US economy: the average contribution of capital-goods imports to growth in U.S .output per hour has increased noticeably since 1967.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)