One line of thought is that the slowdown is largely a legacy of the financial crisis, which, among other things, caused investment spending in many advanced economies to fall to very low levels. 2  See Lowe P (2013), “Productivity and Infrastructure”, Speech to the IARIW-UNSW Conference on Productivity Measurement, Drivers and Trends, Sydney, 26 November.
3  This is true of both labour productivity and multifactor productivity growth. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Graph 8  Another line of thought is that the slowdown is much more structural in nature. A prominent advocate of this view is Professor Robert Gordon from Northwestern University.