Reaping what we sow: Investment trends and the future

Increasing investment is often recommended as a prescription for increasing productivity, stoking demand, and addressing other causes of low growth or prospective crises in the U.S. economy. Yet an examination of investment suggests that it is not poised to fill this role. Private sector investment has undergone a slow transformation, shifting from structures and equipment investment, with the latter enjoying a long trend of falling prices, to a rising role for intellectual property, software, and other intangible capital. The high depreciation rate associated with this new capital imposes a drag on net investment and hence on capital accumulation. Public investment remains mostly focused on infrastructure but has fallen in half as a share of GDP since its peak in the 1950s. These trends emphasize the potential importance of new types of private capital and their implications for growth, as well as the declining role of public investment, including federal R&D.