The Role of IT and Financialization in the Recent American Growth
Young-Soo Lee and Hwanjoo Seo

The upswing in the US economy since the early 1990s has provided researchers with interesting topics. For example, topics like the economic effect of information technology, financialization, volatility of the stock market, changing corporate governance, and income inequality have been extensively studied. This study places emphasis on how information technology (IT) and the prosperous stock market created a structural change in the US economy rather than examines the recent change in the US economy overall. In other words, it is mainly studied how the spread of IT and advance in the financial system have affected the 1990s, named New Economy. The studies with focus on new production paradigm or digital economy argue that the US economic boom is ascribed to static and dynamic economies of scale resulting from industrialization of information and informatization of industries. Consequently, it is assumed that the development and diffusion of IT transformed the US economy into the regime of high growth and productivity. On the contrary, from the views that stress financialization especially in households, the US economic boom is compounded of changes in labor market and corporate governance alongside in financial market, and increase in consumption. That is, they argue that the US economic boom or demand expansion is attributed to a mixture of the flexible labor market, boost of the stock market through maintaining low interest rates, and increase in consumption of durable goods.

This study tests variously these two hypotheses for structural change. To begin with, the dynamic characteristics of IT and financial sector are inspected using the database of Bureau of Economic Analysis and Board of Governance of Federal Reserve System. After that, to examine the long-run features of related time series, unit root test and cointegration test are conducted, which are followed by cusum test, F-test, and test with dummy variables for structural change finally. The results are as follows. First, it is observed that IT has enhanced efficiency of non-information capital and also contributed increasingly to growth of labor productivity since the early 1990s. Second, the influence of financial assets in a form of stock has swollen on consumption since 1993. It is examined that the expanding consumption are associated with increasing stock possession of households by investing funds including pension funds. Although the clear conclusions are not achieved regarding time division and structural change, the results indicate that the contribution of IT to labor productivity growth and the influence of wealth in a form of stock on the consumption have been rapidly expanded since the early 1990s, especially 1993.

국문요약

Ⅰ. 서 론

Ⅱ. 미국경제의 최근 호황에 대한 여러 가설들
1. 전후성장과 위기에 대한 설명
2. 미국의 1990년대 호황에 대한 설명

Ⅲ. IT와 금융화를 둘러싼 논의들
1. IT의 생산성 기여 메커니즘에 대한 두 접근
2. 부의 증가와 소비간의 관계

Ⅳ. 실증분석결과
1. IT투자와 금융자산의 동태적 추이
2. 실증분석결과

Ⅴ. 요약 및 결론

참고문헌

Executive Summary