This bold re-examination of the history of U.S. economic growth is built around a novel claim, that productive capacity grew dramatically across the Depression years (1929-1941) and that this advance provided the foundation for the economic and military success of the United States during the...

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART I: A NEW GROWTH NARRATIVE -- ONE: The Most Technologically Progressive Decade of the Century -- TWO: The Interwar Years -- THREE: The Second World War -- FOUR: The Golden Age and Beyond -- FIVE: The Information Technology Boom -- SIX: Fin de...

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,...