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Economy

How To Exit Our Economic Era Of Slow Growth

Will slow growth rates persist in a global dynamic of 'secular stagnation?' Or will the IT revolution set off new bursts of productivity?

Workers assemble cars at a BMW factory in Germany. Some believe that technological progress has stagnated.
Workers assemble cars at a BMW factory in Germany. Some believe that technological progress has stagnated.
Jean-Marc Vittori

-Analysis-

PARIS — Has painfully slow economic growth become our fate? A decade after the financial meltdown of 2007-2008, this question hangs over us, even after momentarily fading amid last year's global recovery. But now, the list of concerns is again expanding: Brexit, the Italian budget, monetary tightening in the United States, President Trump's protectionism, financial slides in Turkey and Argentina, German political fragmentation, the Saudis drifting off course, rising radicalism in Brazil and inconsistent economic performance in China.

Beyond the political uncertainties and growing inequalities that put pressure on demand, one must always consider growth's most potent engine: the efficiency of production. In France, one clearly observed progress in productivity at work in the 20 years preceding the crisis, at an annual rate of 1.3%. That has dropped to 0.9% since 2010, and a closer look reveals the break occurring in 2003-4. One finds similar shifts around the same time in neighboring countries.

Economists have been fiercely debating the origins of this disruption. Three researchers at the Bank of France, Gilbert Cette, Rémy Lecat, and the young and brilliant Antonin Bergeaud, are providing a hopeful sign in these generally less-than-cheerful debates with their new book, Le Bel Avenir de la croissance (Growth's Beautiful Future).

The IT revolution goes deeper than electricity.

One of the world's great productivity specialists, Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern University in Chicago, set the ball rolling five years ago with a pessimistic microeconomic proposition: that we have exhausted technical progress. The finest smartphone will never change our lives as much as the modern plumbing that brought water into our home, Gordon observes. Two economists from MIT in Boston, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, replied in early 2014 with another microeconomic but optimistic argument: that IT innovations will unleash a tremendous wave of productivity. It is the perspective echoed in debates on AI's attendant hopes and anxieties over the future of work.

The debate is also macroeconomic. In 2013, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, forwarded his own pessimistic argument. A former president of Harvard University, Summers believes we are in "secular stagnation," and an aging population in advanced countries is swelling savings. Investments, he says, are not enough to absorb this money, and interest rates, which assure equilibrium between the two, should be negative. And as this is not acceptable to savers, firms are not investing enough.

The Bank of France economists, however, state very cautiously an optimistic macroeconomic argument; the new digital wave could generate benefits as potent as those of electricity in the 20th century. Those are not yet here, but "historically, technologies have effectively needed decades to diffuse and be utilized in a fully efficient manner."

bankoffrance_economy_technology_stagnation

The Bank of France — Photo: Guilhem Vellut

Bergeaud, Cette and Lecat have even worked out the numbers. With secular stagnation, the annual growth rate in the next half-century will not exceed 1.5%, whether in France or the United States (though one might easily consider that figure excessive). In case of an effective technological revolution, the figure could more than double to reach around 3% a year.

At its core, however, it is not just about rates. These researchers insist there must be big changes to capture the benefits, and it will be hard to thrive in the digital revolution with a state structure and social contract dating from the time of heavy industry. The efficient use of "the most advanced technologies needs certain forms of organizational flexibility that are potentially thwarted by ponderous labor market regulations," they write.

Organizations must fully adapt to adequately profit from an industrial revolution. In the 20th century, industrialists built new factories to make full use of electricity. The destruction of World War II hastened movement in Europe, and both states and peoples created new institutions like social security.

In the 21st century, people will have to go much further by reinventing production, enterprise, social security, public intervention and education. The IT revolution goes deeper than electricity, and it is not just an external shock restricted to the physical realm. It impacts our internal capabilities — not just the way we act, but how we think. Inevitably, it must also be part of an ecological revolution. As for those people unable to adapt, their fate is to vanish from history.

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Society

Netflix And Chills: “Dear Child” Has A German Formula That May Explain Its Success

The Germany-made thriller has made it to the “top 10” list of the streaming platform in more than 90 countries by breaking away from conventional tropes and mixing in German narrative techniques.

Screengrab from Netflix's Dear Child, showing two children, a boy and a girl, hugging a blonde woman.

An investigator reopens a 13-year-old missing persons case when a woman and a child escape from their abductor's captivity.

Dear Child/Netflix
Marie-Luise Goldmann

-Analysis-

BERLIN — If you were looking for proof that Germany is actually capable of producing high-quality series and movies, just take a look at Netflix. Last year, the streaming giant distributed the epic anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front, which won four Academy Awards, while series like Dark and Kleo have received considerable attention abroad.

And now the latest example of the success of German content is Netflix’s new crime series Dear Child, (Liebes Kind), which started streaming on Sep. 7. Within 10 days, the six-part series had garnered some 25 million views.

The series has now reached first place among non-English-language series on Netflix. In more than 90 countries, the psychological thriller has made it to the Netflix top 10 list — even beating the hit manga series One Piece last week.

How did it manage such a feat? What did Dear Child do that other productions didn't?

Keep reading...Show less

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