What's New in the New Economy?

Abstract:

The "new economy" has become a buzzword to characterize the American economy, with positive connotations but imprecise meaning. Sometimes it is used to refer only to selected high technology sectors, specifically computers, semiconductors, software, and telecommunications. But usually the term implies significant changes in the US economy as a whole. At its most dramatic, the term suggested that the traditional business cycle has been banished, inflation and unemployment have been brought forever under control, US long–term growth rates have increased significantly, and the high–value stock market was not over–valued and indeed would continue to rise.

More modestly, it suggests that the structure of the US economy has changed fundamentally, with the implication, inter alia, that monetary and fiscal measures affect the economy differently from the way they did in the past. Finally, it suggests that US productivity growth has returned to, or at least toward, the high levels it enjoyed in earlier years, before the slowdown of the mid–1970s.

This paper will discuss the factual bases for conjecturing that the United States might indeed have a "new economy," review the controversies and evidence surrounding that claim, and suggest how the emergence of a "new economy," if indeed there is one, might affect economies elsewhere in the world, including the Asia–Pacific region.

Last updated on 03/22/2015