The Economic Boom Was Less Booming Than Thought
from the but-still-fairly-boomful dept
Remember the "economic boom" of the late 90s? Well, it turns out that it wasn't quites as big a boom as we were once told. This probably doesn't come as a huge shock to most people who figured that some of the numbers sounded a bit funny anyway. However, it could mean worse things for a lot of the positive predictions that we based on the idea that some areas of the economy really had changed, and we really had increased productivity to record highs, without too much inflation. Some of the new evidence suggests that the economic collapse in Japan was what helped keep inflation in the US in check. An interesting read if you care anything about economic theory. Of course, the extra cynical among you will say "of course nothing changed!", which is certainly a legitimate point. However, it sounds like this was more a problem of bad productivity estimates due to incomplete information rather than anyone really believing anything fundamental changed.
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