The current highly charged atmosphere of allegedly greedy managers and deceived employees and investors suggests the need to take a longer view. One such view is provided by a recent Business Week analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and other data. ("Restating the '90s," by Michael J. Mandel, Business Week, April 1, 2002, pp. 51-58.) It concludes, surprisingly, that nearly all of the benefits of the unusually high U.S. productivity gains of the past six years accrued to managers, employees and customers rather than investors.
The analysis concludes that more than 97 percent of the gains from increased productivity during the 1990s—much of it achieved in the five years beginning in 1996—went to employees and less than 3 percent to investors. Compared with the preceding decade of the 80s, customers enjoyed the benefits of low inflation while corporations suffered lower rates of increase in profits and investors received lower inflation-adjusted rates of return. To the extent that a huge net influx of foreign capital helped finance investments in new technology, one might also conclude that U.S. employees and consumers benefited to a significant degree at the expense of foreign investors. This is particularly true for money invested in new Internet ventures and the telecommunications industries, from which customers appear to have been the major beneficiaries.
| I do not think the situation will change for the better for investors. It will not change because the odds are heavily stacked against them. |
| — Dr. B. V. Krishnamurthy, M. P. Birla Institute of Management |
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Assuming that the analysis is substantially valid, it raises some interesting questions about productivity, growth, and investment in the information economy.
The first, of course, is whether unusually high rates of productivity increases can be sustained to meet increasingly high expectations of managers and employees for continued real wage gains. Some would argue that such expectations, especially for those at the top of organizations, are getting out of hand. After all, substantially higher gains in compensation, much of it in the form of stock option mega-grants, have gone to the top tier of managers than to managers and employees as a whole. Rather than provide the intended incentives, some argue, mega-grants do little more than offer a means of keeping score among peers.
Can managers and employees continue to harvest such a large proportion of productivity gains without serious consequences for future investment in technology and related resources? Or are capital inputs in relation to those of labor somewhat less important in boosting productivity in an information economy?
Will the U.S. continue to offer such a relatively attractive opportunity to investors, particularly those from abroad, that they will continue to put up with lower rates of return while financing our growth? Or will this be the decade in which investors, aided by their board representatives, obtain an increasing share of the fruits of productivity increases? What do you think?