A Review Of The Productivity Resurgence

摘要

A dozen years ago at policy panels like this one today, economists were focused on the reasons for the great U.S. productivity slowdown which had begun 20 years earlier. The policy objective was obvious: to end the slowdown, raise productivity growth, and thereby to increase the resources available for both private and public use. Numerous policies were proposed from larger tax incentives to increased spending on R&D. Some proposed setting a long-term national goal of increasing labor productivity growth by a certain amount, say, by one percentage point per year (Taylor, 1998). Others calculated the benefits that would flow if the dream of higher productivity growth ever came true.