But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in Ameri
ca, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is har
der to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real. The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services t
e evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a “disjunction” between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics. &n