The Process of Economic Growth
A CAUTIONARY FINAL NOTE This chapter has described the problems and prospects of poor countries struggling to be rich and free-s-to provide the dry houses, education. electric lights, fast horses, automobiles, and long vacations of the excerpt that opened...
The Process of Economic Growth
From Marx to Market Beginning in 1989, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union rejected the communist experiment and .introduced market economies. A cruel joke heard in Eastern Europe is “Question: What is communism? Answer: The longest road...
The Process of Economic Growth
Balance Sheet. Is there a final balance sheet on the experience with Soviet central planning? The Soviet model demonstrated that a command economy can work-it is capable of mobilizing capital and labor and producing both guns and butter. But the Soviet economy, with...
The Process of Economic Growth
A brave new world for productivity? Economists have been waiting for an upturn in productivity growth. hoping that the revolution in information technology would spur rapid growth throughout the economy. Indeed; innovations in information technology...
The Process of Economic Growth
Explaining the Slowdown Studies of productivity point to a number of unfavorable factors converging on the American economy at about the same time, including the following: • Beginning in the 970 s, environmental regulations required that firms spend substantial...
The Process of Economic Growth
THE PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN Given the importance of productivity to living standards, economists viewed with alarm the decline in U.S. productivity growth. This break in the trend •. which is called the productivity slowdown, can be seen in Figure 27-8. This graph shows...