By Howard Yu, Jialu Shan, and Mark J. Greeven
We see computers everywhere except in the productivity statistics, economist Robert Solow once said. Indeed, while the internet age has given us mobile phones, cloud computing, Skype, and social media, economic productivity in the world’s richest countries has been dismal. From 2014 to 2018, the US government’s official labor productivity measure grew by just 1% per year on average.
But this productivity paradox might soon change, in large part because of Covid-19.