Some New Economy Lessons for Macroeconomists

The evidence on U.S. investment in high-tech equipment and labor productivity in the 1990s is briefly reviewed and some implications discussed. First, capturing the role of information technologies has raised a number of important measurement issues, which have led to a change in the construction of aggregate real series in the U.S. national accounts, such as real GDP. Second, the recent period provided an important confirmation for traditional neoclassical theories of business investment and productivity. Third, there is a discussion of what type of theoretical and empirical models of economic growth are likely to prove helpful in the future.