I no longer count the articles and publications that refer to the miracle of productivity generated by the introduction of information technology. This thesis, supported by some literature, has become a cliché, but what is surprising is the charm had in those environments that are usually considered more attentive to the real development of the phenomena, however, among observers who have analyzed the phenomenon empirically opinions exist rather mixed.
Official figures of the United States for the last quarter of 2009 confirm a significant increase average productivity in the non-manufacturing firms (especially in services) at an annual rate 2.7%, maintaining a pace that between 1980 and 1995 was 2.8% per year. Thing Interestingly, this value for the last quarter of 2004 was reached after a sharp fall the previous quarter in which productivity growth had increased to 9.5%.
It should be noted that productivity can not undergo violent shocks but a tendency to long-term growth characterized by oscillations, in fact if we look at it historically developments in the United States we see that it grew on average by 3% in the period between 1948-1973 while in the twenty years 1974-1994 increased by only 1, 4% a year, but in five-year period between 1995-2000 and reached the value of 2.5%. Naturally this recovery, according to some, was determined from the entrance on the scene of the Information Technology.
First there is a problem not just how can one measure the productivity in the non – immediately productive?
There are several ways to measure productivity (or the efficiency is defined by scholars as certain invoice). Is commonly defined as the output2 produced by a given amount input, but what interests us is the productivity of labor or the relation between the amount of product per worker or per hour worked. It should be remembered that the official survey U.S. productivity is the relationship between a mix of different outputs (the number of cars manufactured or Kilowatt-hour delivered) and various inputs including capital input is entered and the value various financial assets used. Even now there is a tendency, but this habit has already taken over time to consider not only the amount in the physical output of goods produced but also quality thereof. For example, a computer generation is not comparable to those produced only ten years ago which was thought to include as output the processing power of the hard disk that is payable in the amount of information a second. And ‘as the output in Car would not be considered as the number of cars but the horsepower, namely their power., for which a utility is an output of less than one powerful cars. Seondo these new criteria was introdoto the statistics Hedonic Prices Index (index of deflation current prices) which allowed to raise many economic parameters including the value of