Friday, January 23, 2015

Solow on Planning and Execution

An opinion one might take to heart on many levels:
MIT Professor Robert Solow's work on the US economy – which has become a textbook economics lesson – explains that innovation has accounted for more than 80% of the long-term growth in US per capita income, with capital investments accounting for only 20% of per capita income growth. In other words, the United States and the rest of the post-industrial, developed world owe their epic rise in living standards to the underlying “social capital” that properly energized innovation, entrepreneurship, and thus technological transformation over the last two centuries. It is not enough just to mobilize resources and direct investments to the “right” sectors as China’s central planners have been doing for the last few decades. Once the basic building blocks of economic development are at hand, they still need to be used creatively, effectively, and productively.

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