Volume 45, Number 5 · March 26, 1998
Computers: Waiting for the Revolution
By Jeff Madrick
The Coming American Renaissance: How to Benefit from America's Economic Resurgence
by Michael Moynihan
Simon and Schuster, 319 pp., $23.00
The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives
by Frances Cairncross
Harvard Business School Press, 303 pp., $24.95
The Computer Revolution: An Economic Perspective
by Daniel E. Sichel
Brookings Institution Press, 152 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Education for What? The New Office Economy
by Anthony P. Carnevale, by Stephen J. Rose
Educational Testing Service, 36 pp. (paper)
In early January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported data, including strong job growth in December, suggesting that the economy again grew rapidly in the last three months of 1997. This followed eighteen months in which the real Gross Domestic Product (discounted for inflation) had already grown by an annual rate of 4 percent, and unemployment had fallen to a quarter-century low of 4.7 percent. The output of goods or services per hour of work (known as productivity) had risen by 2.25 percent in the preceding twelve months, and nearly 2 percent a year since 1996, well above its historically slow annual growth trend of 1 percent since the early 1970s (though after revisions it will probably have slowed significantly in the fourth calendar quarter of 1997). All the while, consumer inflation had fallen to less than 2 percent, and Washington was exulting because rising federal tax revenues had nearly eliminated the budget deficit well ahead of schedule.
Review, 6267 words
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