13 Indeed, in a very short space of time, the available labour force in the global economy has doubled from 1.5 to 3 billion, reflecting the opening up of China, India and the former Soviet bloc. 14 As a consequence, the price of a wide range of manufactured goods has declined.
While cyclical forces and lags in the assimilation of new technologies have been important, their influence is likely to be transitory. More fundamentally, I believe that the trend in productivity has ratcheted up, and this development has been the driving force behind the recent extraordinary productivity growth.