The rise and fall of American growth
The US standard of living since the Civil War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9918130 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paola Subacchi (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 93 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 732-733 |
| Publication date | 2017-05-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ia/iix067 |
| OpenAlex | W2611890210 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
To begin in a spirit of full disclosure: this is a book that I wasn't keen to read. I found its length daunting—I am a strong believer in the combination of portability and readability when it comes to physical books. And I was not convinced by the author's argument that the scale and scope of innovation that the United States achieved between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. What about the IT revolution that has completely transformed our lives over the past two decades? Or innovations associated with artificial intelligence that are expected to overhaul our economic and social system? The question, however, as Robert Gordon poses it in The rise and fall of American growth, is not so much about the cutting edge of innovation—for example, the smart phone—or even about its intensity. It is, rather, about the scale of innovation—from large inventions to incremental improvements—and its impact on the living conditions of the whole nation. As readers make their way through the large and fascinating material that Gordon has assembled, they will appreciate the sheer scale of the transformation brought on by innovation, penetrating all aspects of human life, from the home to the workplace. Think of the amount of work that was necessary to carry water, coal and wood to the home before the ‘networking transformation of urban America’ connected every household to the same electricity, water, sewer and gas network (pp. 94–5); or the increase in life expectancy that resulted from the many improvements in medicine and health care. All these changes not only contributed to making life and work less strenuous, but also helped increase labour productivity and make the whole system more productive—i.e. generate more output
Argument (complex analysis · Consumption (sociology · Electrical engineering · Electricity · Life expectancy · Political science · Scale (ratio · Social science · Sociology · Standard of living · Economic Theory and Policy · Engineering · Law
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2023 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |