The Postindustrial Politics of Productivity: Structures and Statistics of the Service Transition in the Long 1970s
研究了1970年代美国生产力增长放缓与向服务经济转型的关系，探讨经济学家如何通过统计和结构分析理解后工业生产力，但政治现实阻碍了产业战略的落实。
Abstract This article examines what Charles Maier once called the “politics of the productivity,” as they manifested in the long 1970s in the United States, a period in which an apparent slowdown in productivity growth was widely linked to the transition to a “service economy.” Economic productivity offers a particularly interesting case study in the history of public numbers: Its measurement is beset by distinctive challenges, and productivity numbers are easier to produce than to meaningfully explain. As a result, productivity statistics tend to invite rather than displace political and moral interpretation. With this in mind, this article explores two parallel attempts by economists to make sense of postindustrial productivity in this period, first through statistical investigation and second through structural analysis. Although such efforts often culminated in calls for a more coherent and structurally oriented industrial strategy, the political realities of the Nixon era ultimately made this impossible.