[6] After a nearly 25-year period of unprecedented growth, the United States experienced a much discussed economic slowdown beginning in 1972.
His method relied on applying considerably sized gains in the business cycle to explain aggregate productivity growth.
They also claimed that improvements in computer hardware and software, would dramatically change the future, and that information is the most important value in the new economy.
Some, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Blake Belding, have suggested that a lot of investment in information technology, especially in software and unused fibre optics, was useless.
[citation needed] The recession of 2001 disproved many of the more extreme predictions made during the boom years, and gave credence to Gordon's minimization of computers' contributions.
However, subsequent research [citation needed] strongly[quantify] suggests that productivity growth has been stimulated by heavy investment in information and communication technology.