Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2609. This note examines how diverging energy cost conditions since the late 2010s have affected industrial activity in advanced economies, with a focus on Germany and Japan. Using high-frequency production indices, it documents a sustained contraction of energy-intensive and trade-exposed (EITE) industries and shows that the impact extends beyond directly exposed sectors. While Germany exhibits pronounced spillovers to non-EITE manufacturing, Japan shows more limited propagation, indicating heterogeneous economy-wide adjustment. Decomposition analysis reveals that these declines are broad-based across core sectors but differ in composition and temporal patterns, with closer alignment to energy price fluctuations in Germany and more linear adjustment in Japan. These findings suggest that recent changes reflect structural adjustment and production reallocation, with important implications for interpreting aggregate productivity dynamics.
Nomura et al. (Tue,) studied this question.