A Tale of Two Stagnations

The term “secular stagnation,” coined by economists in the 1930s and recently popularized by Larry Summers, has become a catch-all description for long-term economic pessimism. But it’s gotten confused with a very different idea -- the technological stagnation hypothesis, proposed by economist Robert Gordon (and by Bloomberg View’s Tyler Cowen). These are two very different ideas. Both would lead to slow growth in the long term, but they imply different causes and different remedies.

Summers’ secular stagnation is all about aggregate demand. Normally, economists think of demand as something that falls temporarily in a recession and then bounces back. But the failure of many economies to return to their previous trends after big slowdowns has made some economists worry if demand shortfalls could be very persistent.