the rise and fall of american growth by robert gordon

He argues that the pace of innovation has slowed since 1970 (a point that will surprise many people), and furthermore that the gains from technological improvement have been shared less broadly (a point that is widely appreciated and true).Ī central aspect of Gordon’s thesis is that the conventional measures of economic growth omit some of the largest gains in living standards and therefore underestimate economic progress. In designating 1870–1970 as the special century, Gordon emphasizes that the period since 1970 has been less special. Productivity growth rose from the late nineteenth century and peaked in the 1950s, but has slowed to a crawl since 1970. The growth rate looks like an inverted U. Living standards, as measured by GDP per capita or real wages, accelerated after 1870. Gordon focuses on growth in the United States. Then, according to standard calculations, the world economy took off. Another doubling took place over the subsequent period to 1870. According to the economic historian Bradford DeLong, from the first rock tools used by humanoids three million years ago, to the earliest cities ten thousand years ago, through the Middle Ages, to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, living standards doubled (with a growth of 0.00002 percent per year). For most of human history, economic progress moved at a crawl.

The book is without peer in providing a statistical analysis of the uneven pace of growth and technological change, in describing the technologies that led to the remarkable progress during the special century, and in concluding with a provocative hypothesis that the future is unlikely to bring anything approaching the economic gains of the earlier period. His study focuses on what he calls the “special century” from 1870 to 1970-in which living standards increased more rapidly than at any time before or after. Robert Gordon has written a magnificent book on the economic history of the United States over the last one and a half centuries. Gustave Caillebotte: The Floor Planers, 1875

The rise and fall of american growth by robert gordon