General Purpose Technologies

Boyan Jovanovic () and Peter Rousseau ()

No 11093, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Electricity and Information Technology (IT) are perhaps the two most important general purpose technologies (GPTs) to date. We analyze how the U.S. economy reacted to them. The Electricity and IT eras are similar, but also differ in several important ways. Electrification was more broadly adopted, whereas IT seems to be technologically more "revolutionary." The productivity slowdown is stronger in the IT era but the ongoing spread of IT and its continuing precipitous price decline are reasons for optimism about growth in the 21st century.

JEL-codes: O3 N2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dev, nep-ene and nep-ino
Date: 2005-01
Note: DAE EFG PR
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