Productivity and the Services of Capital and Labor

Martin Neil Baily

Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow Emeritus - Economic Studies, Center on Regulation and Markets

Discussants: Robert J. Gordon and

Robert J. Gordon Stanley G. Harris Professor of the Social Sciences - Northwestern University

Robert M. Solow

RMS

Robert M. Solow

THE SLOWDOWN in productivity growth in the U.S. economy that has
occurred in the past ten years has been the subject of several careful
studies accounting for growth.’ Although these studies differ in methodology
and emphasis, their overall conclusion is clear. They attribute most
of the slowdown in the growth of average labor productivity to a decline
in the growth rate of total factor productivity-that is, to developments
other than changes in the quantities of capital and labor used in production.