The Equipment Hypothesis and U.S. Economic Growth
25 Pages Posted: 22 Feb 2008 Last revised: 27 Oct 2009
Abstract
In several articles published in the 1990s, de Long and Summers argued that investment in producer durables had a high propensity to generate externalities in using industries, resulting in a systematic and substantial divergence between its social and private return. They maintained, moreover, that this was not the case for structures investment. Together, these claims constitute the equipment hypothesis. This paper explores the degree to which the history of U.S. economic growth in the twentieth century supports it.
Keywords: Economic history, Economic growth, Productivity, Equipment investment
JEL Classification: D24, N12, O11, O47
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Quality-Adjusted Prices for the American Automobile Industry: 1906-1940
-
Uncontrolled Land Development and the Duration of the Depression in the United States
-
American Living Standards, 1888-1994: Evidence from Consumer Expenditures
-
Not What it Used to Be: The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Volumes II and III
-
The Relative Productivity of American Distribution, 1869-1992