The Industry Origins of Slow U.S. Productivity Growth

Grant Year: 2018

Robert Gordon will examine the drivers of the slowdown in the U.S. economy’s productivity growth rate. He will look across major industries to assess whether the measured decline in the productivity growth rate is due to a decline in innovation, a perceived decline in the return on investment, measurement error, or regulatory barriers that hinder competition and efficiency. The project’s findings will appear in a series of papers and serve as an expansion of the work that appeared in his recent book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth.