诺奖得主 福格尔 的论文 Catching up with the Economy

“In his Presidential Address five years ago, Zvi Griliches ( 1994)called attention to the severe difficulties that beset current attempts to measure the growth of labor productivity in the American economy. Because of these difficulties, it is likely that the true rate of economic growth is substantially underestimated. The root of the problem is the difficulty in measuring output in the service sector which now represents two-thirds of the economy. In such sectors as health care and information services, the contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) is measured by inputs rather than outputs, a procedure that makes it imlpossible to gauge accurately improvements in the quality of output. Thus, in the case of computers, which are transforming American society, economists have been unable, so far, to find a measurable contribution of computers to the rise in labor productivity-an astonishing paradox.”