ABSTRACT
The automobile's innovation progressed sufficiently that it became the central means of overland transportation between 1910 and 1923. The stage-two innovation of Information Technology (IT) can be dated from the early 1980s, when falling costs and expanding capabilities of computing made it economically attractive, to apply computerization to an expanding array of increasingly complex business problems. The smoothed productivity data eliminate some, but not all the volatility in productivity ratios that stem from short-term economic events taking place atop the underlying technology cycle. Inflation reflects growth in the money supply in excess of the economy's overall ability to absorb liquidity productively. The semiconductor tor price decline is consistent with an overall decline in the costs of applying computer technology to a wide spectrum of industrial and other economic activity. Many fraudulent schemes share at least one trait with bubbles: both often have their origins in some sort of legitimate activity.
