Productivity ─ Information Technology And the American Growth Resurgence

The American economy has experienced renewed growth since 1995, with this surge rooted in the development and deployment of information technology (IT). This book traces the American growth resurgence to its sources within individual industries, documents the critical role of IT, and shows how U.S. investment in IT has important parallels in other developed countries.

In analyzing the experience in the United States, the authors identify four IT-producing industries, 17 IT-using industries, and 23 non-IT industries and show that the IT-producing and IT-using industries play a disproportionate role in the American growth resurgence. These industries account for only about 30 percent of US GDP but contributed half of the acceleration in economic growth. The study finds that differences in the relative importance of IT-producing industries in other G7 countries have contributed to wide disparities in the impact of IT on economic growth.

Productivity, Volume 3 will be of special interest to analysts of the "new economy" and its remarkable persistence through periods of boom and recession.

Mun S. Ho is a fellow in the Program on Technology and Economic Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Visiting Scholar at Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C.