software as capital

Michael Perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Sat Aug 28 13:58:51 PDT 1999


Doug asked what Strassmann gave as an objection:

[Will I really be hauled before a tribunal?]

They attribute the gains from outsourcing to computers:

101-2: Brynjolfsson and Hitt use national economic and national

employment statistics. Their widely publicized findings about the

productivity of computers reflects data from 802 corporations in

the goods producing sector and 319 corporations in the service

sector. The goods producers constitute seventy-two percent of

their total sample of firms. What they declared as productivity

gains largely reflects structural shifts in the goods producing

sector. The increase in revenue per employee was not entirely a

gain in the ratio of output over input, but a change in the

composition of resources, or outsourcing. Many of the gains in this measure of productivity would not be attributable computers. They are the consequence of changes in the ways how corporations created their products and services.

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Doug Henwood wrote:


> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > > Here's what Greenspan said the other day:
> >
> >Doug, can you give the exact web site.
>
> <http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/BoardDocs/Speeches/1999/19990827.htm>.
>
> >Paul Strassmann attacks Brynjolfsson.
>
> Why? What does he attack him for?
>
> Brynjolfsson's got a website full of papers, including one that
> claims a return to IS investments over 80%, at
> <http://ccs.mit.edu/erik/index99.html>. The paper that Greenspan
> cites isn't there.
>
> Doug

-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



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