Jason Furman: belief

Transcript context

…Referring to Gordon, here’s another softball question. Why did productivity fall so much after either 1973 or in, say, the last 15 years? [laughter] This is the easy podcast. Yep. I think there’s something. Less infrastructure investment, less R&D. There were some major projects in terms of highways in the 1950s, the lunar landing in the 1960s, et cetera. I’d like to think that was the answer to your question. I think the truth is, when you go and quantify that type of public investment, it’s a couple tenths of a percent of the answer. In the recent period, I do think the increased concentration we’re talking about might be a tenth or two percentage point of the slowdown that we’ve seen. Some of it may be that you need to invert your question and ask not why did productivity slow down, but why was productivity so fast? There’s a lot of very special things about the 1950s and the 1960s, just coming off of World War II. And in terms of ’95 to 2005, well, it’s a relatively short period of time. Stuff fluctuates. You have a period of faster growth. But broadly speaking, we’re in a world of 1.5 percent productivity growth if we’re lucky. Unfortunately, it’s been more like 1 [percent] lately, and that’s just what it is. What is your take on the degree of unmeasured benefits from the internet? High, low, intermediate?…

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