Understanding the drivers of productivity remains one of the most sought after phenomena in economics. The ability to create produce more from less resources is undoubtedly appealing. Using recently updated Penn World Table data, we investigate to what degree previous results using a popular productivity decomposition are maintained. We find that, contrary to conclusions from earlier work, technical efficiency (catching up) played a more pronounced role in the global increase in productivity over the 1965–1990 period. We also find a larger effect for technical change than earlier work and a far lesser role for capital deepening. This suite of results augurs the coming information age that placed less weight on physical capital to create and sustain wealth. Taken together our findings here suggest that as data collection, its quality and evaluation methods evolve, so too will our understanding of productivity dynamics.

了解生产力的驱动因素仍然是经济学中最受追捧的现象之一。用更少的资源创造更多产品的能力无疑是有吸引力的。使用最近更新的 Penn World Table 数据，我们调查使用流行的生产力分解的先前结果在多大程度上得以维持。我们发现，与早期工作的结论相反，技术效率（追赶）在 1965-1990 年期间全球生产力的提高中发挥了更显着的作用。我们还发现，与早期工作相比，技术变革的影响更大，而资本深化的作用则小得多。这套结果预示着即将到来的信息时代，信息时代对物质资本创造和维持财富的重视程度降低。综合我们在这里的研究结果表明，作为数据收集，