Reading: Robert Gordon (2014): The Demise of U.S. Economic Growth: Restatement, Rebuttal, and Reflections
Robert Gordon (2014): “The Demise of U.S. Economic Growth: Restatement, Rebuttal, and Reflections”, NBER Working Paper No. 19895 (February) http://www.nber.org/papers/w19895
Five Questions:
- What happened around 1880, in Robert Gordon's view?
- Why did it happen around 1880--not before and not after?
- Why can't we duplicate what happened around 1880 in its essential elements to deliver another century of 2%/year technology-and-organization-frontier productivity growth?
- What are the "headwinds" that will push median income growth in the North Atlantic economies well below the 1%-year labor productivity growth that Gordon sees as our likely destiny?
- Relative to all past civilizations, we are now so rich as to be approaching what they might have seen as a "singularity" of sorts. How many singularities or near-through has humanity transitioned through? How should we think about economic growth across "singularities" or near-singularities?
