Technological advance has always enhanced household as well as
business efficiency. Our domestic productivity has benefited from
washing machines, vacuum cleaners and central heating, and before that
from electric light and automobiles. But at least these things were
partially accounted for: from an economic perspective a car is a faster
and cheaper horse. Statisticians in principle incorporated these
improvements in the efficiency of consumer goods into their measurement
of productivity, though in practice they did not try very hard.
But the technological advances of the past decade seem to have increased the efficiency of households, rather than the efficiency of businesses, to an unusual extent. An ereader in the pocket replaces a roomful of books, and all the world’s music is streamed to my computer. We look at aggregate statistics and worry about the slowdown in growth and productivity. But the evidence of our eyes seems to tell a different story.
- Look at home to find the efficiency gains from recent technological innovation
But the technological advances of the past decade seem to have increased the efficiency of households, rather than the efficiency of businesses, to an unusual extent. An ereader in the pocket replaces a roomful of books, and all the world’s music is streamed to my computer. We look at aggregate statistics and worry about the slowdown in growth and productivity. But the evidence of our eyes seems to tell a different story.
- Look at home to find the efficiency gains from recent technological innovation
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