software as capital

[christian a. gregory]

I'd like to know more about times mfg productivity rates have reached golden
age levels. As I recall, this has happened only recently--since 1990, let's
say, and then not consistently. As Doug and the recent story in _the
Economist_ suggest, this doesn't necessarily mean they have assimilated
technologies better. Could this not also be the effect of lower
capital/labor cost? And besides, current OECD statistics say that total
productivity growth (as in GDP/hour) is now .7%, where as from 60-73 it was
2.6%.

Fumbling, evidently, quite away from exstacy.

Christian


> >*mfg productivity growth rates have often reached so called Golden Age
> >levels, esp. Japan, the US and to a lesser extent UK, suggesting that
they
> >have indeed assimilated new technologies (CAD, CAM) at a faster rate than
> >France and Germany.
>
> And also that they've outsourced a lot of stuff, like accounting and
> janitorial services, with very slow productivity growth. So
> manufacturing ends up looking very good, but average productivity
> doesn't.
>
> Doug
>
>