The resurgence of growth in the late 1990s: is information technology the story?

Stephen Oliner () and Daniel Sichel ()

Proceedings, 2000

Abstract: The performance of the U.S. economy over the past several years has been remarkable, including a rebound in labor productivity growth after nearly a quarter century of sluggish gains. To assess the role of information technology in the recent rebound, this paper re-examines the growth contribution of computers and related inputs with the same neoclassical framework that we have used in earlier work. ; Our results indicate that the contribution to productivity growth from the use of information technology - including computer hardware, software, and communication equipment - surged in the second half of the 1990s. In addition, technological advance in the production of computers appears to have contributed importantly to the speed-up in productivity growth. All in all, we estimate that the use of information technology and the production of computers accounted for about two-thirds of the 1 percentage point step-up in productivity growth between the first and second halves of the decade. Thus, to answer the question posed in the title of this paper, information technology largely is the story.

Keywords: Productivity; Information technology; Computers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
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Journal Article: The Resurgence of Growth in the Late 1990s: Is Information Technology the Story? (2000)
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