Solow: Productividad y crecimiento

Una entrevista con Robert Solow, toda ella interesante, pero de la que destaco los últimos puntos: el pesimismo actual que prevé una "Secular Stagnation", un largo perdido de baja inversión privada, junto con un más bajo crecimiento poblacional mundial. Creo que don interesantes los matices, que aportan una visión no tan pesimista como la de Larry Summers, al menos a largo plazo -aunque se declara escéptico respecto a la capacidad predictiva de los economistas.

The Quarterly: There are some very pessimistic folks when it comes to future growth. Bob Gordon, for example, who thinks that a lot of innovation has run out of steam. And Larry Summers, whose thoughts about secular stagnation look at it more from the demand side of the economy. Are you as pessimistic as they are about the prospects for growth?

Robert Solow: I’m not as pessimistic as Bob Gordon about the long-run technological prospects, because I feel less certain about them than he is. In the case of Gordon, by the way, I think that to a certain extent he is concerned not so much with the real-GDP-per-hour-worked side of this as with how much technology changes our lives. And though we might conceivably have technological innovations which improve productivity dramatically, they won’t change life as much as the wheel or, as Bob Gordon likes to point out, the flush toilet. But I’m not as pessimistic as Bob Gordon about the future of advanced technology. I’m just uncertain.

The secular-stagnation notion is that it may be harder, for the next 50 years, to maintain full utilization of economies than it was in the last 50 years. One technical way to put it is that the real interest rate compatible with full utilization might be negative. This is like Alvin Hansen’s old secular stagnation.² In a way, it rests on running out of profitable investment opportunities.

Rapid technological progress, if it entails hardware, is a way of providing investment opportunities that are profitable. So we have to hope for that. And as I say, I’m not necessarily pessimistic about that at all. If slower population growth eliminates some investment opportunities—those that come from providing a house and a refrigerator and a washing machine for every family—then if technological progress slows a little bit, the balance between diminishing returns and technology could shift a bit in favor of diminishing returns. The available rates of return on plant and equipment investment might be a little lower. The motivation to invest—comparing that with the rate of interest, which can’t fall below zero—that gap might narrow. And it could get harder to maintain full employment.

There’s a good Keynesian answer to this, which involves government expenditures. But we’re not so great at that and not getting any better at it either. So I think that there is a case to be made that it might be harder in the future to generate the investment spending—the nonincome-induced spending, the autonomous spending, to use the lingo—that’s needed to maintain full employment and full utilization.

The Quarterly: And here we are at a time when corporate investment is low.

Robert Solow: It’s a little mysterious because corporate profits are very good, and corporations are sitting on cash. The natural reading of that—but I don’t know if it’s true—is that they’re worried about their future profitability, because that’s what would limit their willingness to invest. Why they are worried about their future profitability, I don’t know.

The Quarterly: What might be done to accelerate growth? Do you think there are things that managers could do to spur the US or the global economy?

Robert Solow: I take the Milton Friedman point of view here, which is strange for me. It’s not the business of the individual manager to say, “What would be good for the health of the economy?” It’s primarily the business of the individual manager to increase efficiency and profitability. I think that to the extent top management is paralyzed by political uncertainty or whatever, that is a kind of funk— a failure of collective action.

The Quarterly: In the 1980s, you said that we can see IT everywhere but in the productivity numbers. Do you think that was true then? And if so, did it remain true?

Robert Solow: I think when I made that remark, I was reviewing somebody’s book. It was true, and now it’s no longer true. You can, in fact, trace the productivity effects of information technology. In retrospect, and probably inevitably, there was a lag in learning how to make effective use of it in manufacturing, in retailing, in wholesaling, in all sorts of large sectors. But now, I think there’s no doubt that you can measure big user gains in productivity from the computer. I don’t think I was wrong when I said that you couldn’t. I wasn’t predicting the future. I was saying what was true at the time.