Productivity program meeting.

• Position: Bureau News

The NBER's Program on Productivity met in Cambridge on March 17. Program Director Ernst Berndt of MIT organized the meeting, where the following papers were discussed:

Bruce A. Weinherg, Ohio State University and NBER, "Which Labor Economists Invested in Human Capital? Geography, Vintage, and Participation in Scientific Revolutions"

David H. Autor, MIT and NBER; William R. Kerr, Harvard University; and Adriana D. Kugler, University of Houston and NBER, "Do Employment Protections Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States"

Carol A. Corrado, Federal Reserve Board; Charles R. Hulten, University of Maryland and NBER; and Daniel E. Sichel, Federal Reserve Board, "Intangible Capital and Economic Growth"(NBER Working Paper No. 11948)

Marcela Eslava, Universidad de Los Andes; John Haltiwanger, University of Maryland and NBER; Adriana Kugler, University of Houston and NBER; and Maurice Kugler, University of Southhampton, "Factor Adjustments After Deregulation: Panel Evidence from Colombian Plants" Discussant: Chad Syverson, University of Chicago and NBER

Johannes Van Biesebroeck, University of Toronto and NBER, "Wages Equal Productivity: Fact or Fiction" Discussant: Wayne Gray, Clark University and NBER

Boyan Jovanovic, New York University and NBER, and Chung-Yi Tse, "Creative Destruction in Industries" Discussant: Shane Greenstein, Northwestern University and NBER

Weinberg studies how proximity and vintage are related to innovation, using evidence from the human capital revolution in labor economics. He finds a strong effect of geography on the probability of making a contribution and on the nature of the contribution. Contributors to the human capital paradigm are significantly more likely to have studied at the University of Chicago or Columbia University and to have been in graduate school in the early years of the human capital revolution, earning their doctorates during the mid-1960s. These results also indicate that a small number of contributors played a large role in the development of human capital, especially at the beginning.

Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect productivity. Autor, Kerr, and Kugler use the adoption of wrongful-discharge protections by U.S. state courts over the last three decades to evaluate...