摘要：Information Technology and Productivity: Where Are We Now and Where Are
We Going? Productivity growth in the U.S. economy jumped during the second half of the
1990s, a resurgence that many analysts linked to information technology (IT). However,
shortly after this consensus emerged, demand for IT products fell sharply, leading to a
lively debate about the connection between IT and productivity and about the sustainability
of the faster growth. We contribute to this debate in two ways. First, to assess the robustness
of the earlier evidence, we extend the growth-accounting results in Oliner and Sichel
(2000a) through 2001. The new results confirm the basic story in our earlier work – that the
acceleration in labor productivity after 1995 was driven largely by the greater use of IT
capital goods and by the more rapid efficiency gains in the production of IT goods. Second,
to assess whether the pickup in productivity growth is sustainable, we analyze the steadystate
properties of a multi-sector growth model. This exercise generates a range for labor
productivity growth of 2 percent to 2 . percent per year, which suggests that much – and
possibly all – of the resurgence is sustainable.
