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The graph looks linear. If productivity gains were increasing (or even staying constant), you'd expect it to be more than linear. This implies the rate of produ

The graph looks linear. If productivity gains were increasing (or even staying constant), you'd expect it to be more than linear. This implies the rate of productivity change is decreasing.

marcosdumay 4y ago
Hum, ok, you expect an exponential growth in productivity. Any reason why? Anyway, talk about an underspecified issue. The article simply has no claim at all of how they expect productivity to behave, just that it's not following the expectation. The one productivity problem I'm aware about is about it not growing at all for decades, just moving on a noisy horizontal. It's relevant that the GDP per capita follows a different curve. That means that people are working more and adding less value by work-hour.
- DANK_YACHT 4y ago
  I don’t have an expectation. The article is essentially asking why is the second derivative of productivity negative despite increased technological advancement. I’m just pointing out that your graph shows that the second derivative of productivity is indeed negative.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Well, it's walking around zero, since the trend is a line. The rate of change is neither decreasing nor increasing in linear terms. But, anyway, that's GDP per capita. Data for productivity is much less available, but here is some for the US alone (that's the change annualized): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=PRS85006092 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=PRS85006092, Notice that the rate of change itself (first derivative) stays for ages around 0.
    - DANK_YACHT 4y ago
      I guess we're really talking about the first derivative of PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH in the formula GDP/CAP(t) = GDP/CAP(t-1) * (1 + PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH(t)).
      - marcosdumay 4y ago
        That graph on my comment is the rate of change of productivity (on a relative base, so it's not a derivative, a derivative would be a small bit biased lower). It's what you are calling PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH. (I didn't find one with the raw productivity.) You can see directly on the graph that it stays for some times dancing around 0. Most of the times it's higher, but the times with a near 0 average are quite long. If you "integrate" it over the exponentials, you will get some times of approximately linear growth, separated by times of almost no growth. Those times of almost no growth are what people normally talk about when they talk about productivity stagnation. One of those was at the 80s when the computers were taking over offices, another one is quite recent, after the 2008 crisis. Anyway, the GDP per capita graph is very different.

The graph looks linear. If productivity gains were increasing (or even staying constant), you'd expect it to be more than linear. This implies the rate of productivity change is decreasing.

marcosdumay 4y ago

Hum, ok, you expect an exponential growth in productivity. Any reason why? Anyway, talk about an underspecified issue. The article simply has no claim at all of how they expect productivity to behave, just that it's not following the expectation. The one productivity problem I'm aware about is about it not growing at all for decades, just moving on a noisy horizontal. It's relevant that the GDP per capita follows a different curve. That means that people are working more and adding less value by work-hour.

DANK_YACHT 4y ago
I don’t have an expectation. The article is essentially asking why is the second derivative of productivity negative despite increased technological advancement. I’m just pointing out that your graph shows that the second derivative of productivity is indeed negative.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Well, it's walking around zero, since the trend is a line. The rate of change is neither decreasing nor increasing in linear terms. But, anyway, that's GDP per capita. Data for productivity is much less available, but here is some for the US alone (that's the change annualized): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=PRS85006092 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=PRS85006092, Notice that the rate of change itself (first derivative) stays for ages around 0.
  - DANK_YACHT 4y ago
    I guess we're really talking about the first derivative of PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH in the formula GDP/CAP(t) = GDP/CAP(t-1) * (1 + PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH(t)).
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      That graph on my comment is the rate of change of productivity (on a relative base, so it's not a derivative, a derivative would be a small bit biased lower). It's what you are calling PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH. (I didn't find one with the raw productivity.) You can see directly on the graph that it stays for some times dancing around 0. Most of the times it's higher, but the times with a near 0 average are quite long. If you "integrate" it over the exponentials, you will get some times of approximately linear growth, separated by times of almost no growth. Those times of almost no growth are what people normally talk about when they talk about productivity stagnation. One of those was at the 80s when the computers were taking over offices, another one is quite recent, after the 2008 crisis. Anyway, the GDP per capita graph is very different.