In short: Output and productivity growth has been very buoyant especially since the mid-1990s - that is in an advanced phase of the upturn. The scale and the timing of these productivity increases can scarcely be explained in terms of the normal cyclical pattern. I wonder whether Schumpeter would have already interpreted the available evidence as a long wave.
In Germany, the GDP growth rate in the 1990s was almost 1½ percentage points below the corresponding US figure. Currently, the difference in the trend growth is likely to be slightly more than one percentage point.3 When considering the individual components of demand, the different momentum of capital spending is particularly striking.