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This paper develops a new analysis of the U. S. economy in the 1920s that is illuminated by contrasts with the 1990s, and it also re examines the causes of the Great Depression. In both the 1920s and the 1990s the acceleration of productivity growth linked to the delayed effects of previously invented 'general purpose technologies' stimulated an increase in fixed investment that became excessive and proved to be unsustainable, while the productivity acceleration helps to account for low inflation in both decades. The uncanny parallel of the stock market boom, bubble, and collapse in 1995-2001 as in 1924-1930, reminds us that business cycles emerge from the complex interplay of multiple factors, not just one. Common elements between the two decades are overshadowed by differences, including the much larger share of agricultural output in the 1920s, the weakness of farm prices throughout the decade, and the role of collapsing farm prices in the pervasive post-1929 downward shift in aggregate demand. Another partly related difference was a high volatility of inventory accumulation that reflected the larger share of agriculture and manufacturing in the economy of the 1920s. Failures of public policy in the 1920s included the absence of deposit insurance, the unit-banking regulations that prevented the diversification of financial risk across regions, and the low margin requirements that exacerbated swings in stock market prices. Further, the 1920s witnessed the advent of protectionism and the sharp curtailment of immigration. The stability of the American economy after the 2000-01 collapse of investment and the stock market proves that good public policy matters, going beyond the narrowly defined operations of monetary and fiscal policy. Such highly diverse policies as banking regulation, deposit insurance, margin rules, reduction of tariffs, and loose restrictions on immigration all combine to make today's American economy more stable and less fragile than in the 1920s.

Productivity growth in the United States was considerably faster during 2000-03 than in the boom years of 1995-2000. This ebullient productivity performance raises numerous questions about its interpretation and its implications for the future, and these are stated here in the form of five puzzles. (1) Whatever happened to the cyclical effect? Skeptics were justified on the basis of data through the end of 1999 in their claim that part of the post-1995 productivity growth revival reflected the normal cyclical correlation between productivity and output growth. In contrast, data through mid-2003 reveal only a negligible cyclical effect for 1995-99 but rather a temporary ‘bubble’ in 2002-03. (2) Why did productivity growth accelerate after 2000 when the ICT investment boom was collapsing? The most persuasive argument points to unusually savage corporate cost-cutting and ‘hidden’ intangible investments in the late 1990s that provided productivity benefits after 2000. (3) The steady decline in the price of computer power implies steady technical progress, but then why did computers produce so little productivity growth before 1995 and so much afterwards? We draw an analogy to electricity, where miniaturization was the key step in making small electric motors practicable, and the internal combustion engine, where complementary investments, especially roads, were necessary to reap benefits. (4) What does the collapse of the investment boom imply about the future of innovation? First-rate inventions in the 1990s, notably the web and user-friendly business productivity software, are being followed by second-rate inventions in the current decade. (5) Finally, why did productivity growth slow down in Europe but accelerate in the US? A consensus is emerging that US institutions foster creative destruction and financial markets that welcome innovation, while Europe remains under the control of corporatist institutions that dampen competition and inhibit new entry. Further, Europe lacks a youth culture like that of the US which fosters independence: US teenagers work after school and college students must work to pay for much of their educational expense. There is a chasm of values across the Atlantic.

This paper assesses the ‘one big wave’ in multi-factor productivity (MFP) growth for the United States since 1870. The wave-like pattern starts with slow MFP growth in the late 19th century, then acceleration peaking in 1928-50, and then a deceleration to a slow rate after 1972 that returns to the poor performance of 1870-1891. A counterpart of the standard data is a mysterious doubling in the ratio of output to capital input when the postwar era is compared with 1870-1929. Measurement adjustments are applied to the standard input data for changes in the composition of labour and capital and for previous errors in the measurement of capital. A new MFP series taking account of all these adjustments grows more slowly throughout, and the ‘big wave’ phenomenon is both flatter and extends back further in time to 1891. Solved completely is the previous puzzle of the jump in the output-capital ratio; in the new data this ratio is actually lower in 1996 than in 1870. The primary substantive explanation for the big wave lies in the timing of inventions. MFP growth during the ‘big wave’ period benefited from the diffusion of four great clusters of inventions that dwarf today's information technology revolution in their combined importance. A complementary hypothesis is that the partial closing of American labour markets to immigration and of American goods markets to imports during the big wave period gave an artificial and temporary boost to real wages which fed back into boosting productivity growth, followed by a reopening that contributed to the post-1972 productivity slowdown.

This paper shows how misleading is the facile contrast of Europe following a path of high productivity growth, high unemployment, and relatively greater income equality, with the opposite path being pursued by the United States. While structural shocks may initially create a positive trade-off between productivity and unemployment, they set in motion a dynamic path of adjustment involving capital accumulation or decumulation that in principle can eliminate the trade-off.The main theoretical contributions of this paper are to show how a productivity-unemployment trade-off might emerge and how it might subsequently disappear as this dynamic adjustment path is set in motion. Its empirical work develops a new data base for levels and growth rates of output per hour, capital per hour, and multifactor productivity in the G-7 nations both for the aggregate economy and for nine sub-sectors. It provides regression estimates that decompose observed differences in productivity growth across sectors. It finds that much of the productivity growth advantage of the four large European countries over the United States is explained by convergence and by more rapid capital accumulation, and that the only significant effect of higher unemployment is to cause capital accumulation to decelerate, thus reducing the growth rate of output per hour relative to multi-factor productivity.

One of the starkest differences between the recent economic performance of the US and of Europe, in addition to faster job creation in the US, is its slower productivity growth. This paper begins with data showing that US productivity growth has been essentially zero since 1973 outside of manufacturing. In contrast, productivity growth in US manufacturing has revived since 1979, and over the period 1979-87 has actually been more rapid than during the 1948-73 'golden age'.