4 - Economic growth in the United States: a review article

Summary

Few things have been more common in recent economics literature and in political pronouncements than expressions of dissatisfaction with the pace of U.S. economic growth, accompanied by ringing demands that we “can and must” speed the pace of our development. And, of course, few things have been less common than objective analyses of the grounds for dissatisfaction or coherent and comprehensive programs for accelerating our growth. This is the gap that Edward Denison's book attempts to fill. His work is, in fact, a notable contribution to a vexed and difficult subject. In astonishingly brief compass, Denison presents a picture of past trends in output growth and in the development of the various sources to which the growth of productive capacity can be traced, a projection of the probable future flows from these sources, and a measured evaluation of the possible steps that might be taken to make the flows still larger. Moreover, in grappling with these complicated and still largely unexplored issues, he has achieved a quite remarkable combination of technical finesse and depth with clear and almost deceptively simple exposition. The book is, therefore, a minor miracle of lucidity and persuasiveness which calls for the most serious study by economists while it engages the attention of a much wider audience.

It would perhaps be too much to say that, with the appearance of Denison's book, the whole subject of U.S. economic growth has been decisively clarified, that we now know where we have come from, where we are going, and what we can reasonably try to do about it.