Information Technology and Productivity Growth: German Trends and OECD Comparisons

Theo S. Eicher and Thomas Strobel present an industry-level account of the recent changes in German productivity growth and compare the trends to Europe and the US. The specific focus is on how differential investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) affected the economic performance of these economies.

Not all industrialized countries shared the economic fortunes that ICT presented to the US economy. While the US experienced successive accelerations in its trend growth i...