Fed governor says productivity fosters growth.

Financial Update, January, 2005

Almost certainly the most important economic development in the United States in the past decade has been the sustained increase in the growth rate of labor productivity, or output per hour of work, according to Ben S. Bernanke, a member of the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in January, Bernanke noted that between 1995 and 2001 the rate of productivity growth picked up significantly, to about 2.5 percent per year--a figure that contributed to a growing perception among economists that the United States might be entering a new economic era. The rate of productivity is so important, said Bernanke, because economists agree that productivity growth is the principal long-term source of improvements in living...

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