R & D and the Productivity Slowdown
探讨研发支出增长放缓能否解释生产率增长放缓，通过回顾相关文献和作者自己的估算，得出直接答案“可能不能”，但论证过程本身具有启发性。
The question I shall address in this pa-per is: Can the slowdown in productivity growth be explained, wholly or in part, by the recent slowdown in the growth of real R&D expenditures? But first we have to review the following questions: I) What is to be explained? Which productivity and what slowdown? 2) What is the mechanism by which R&D could have contributed to this slowdown? 3) What did happen to R&D in the relevant period? Besides traversing this somewhat familiar ground and reviewing some of the recent literature on this topic, I shall also report on some estimates of my own. The direct answer to the opening question is "probably not." But how we get there needs documenting and may prove instructive on its own merits.