Flexes Its Can It Compete with History's Best?

'We are witnessing nothing less than the rise of a digi-tal economy and a new global medium that will be the single most important driver of business, eco-nomic and social change in the coming century."1 T he U.S. economy has experienced more than 18 years of uninterrupted growth sincethe end of the 1981-82 recession. The lone blemish during this so-called Long Boomwas a recession lasting just nine months, from July 1990 to March 1991. But whathas so enthralled many economists is not the length of the boom but the accelera-tion in the economy's rate of productivity growth during the last half of the 1990s. Most economists who have attempted to explain the cause of this productivity boom point to the spate of innovations and technological advances associated with the microchip, which has spurred heavy investment in high-tech information and communica-tions technology equipment and software. Many questions about the pro-ductivity boom remain, however