Economy
Where America's Inventors Are
The geography of American innovation over the last decade.
Ever since the economic crisis of 2008, and perhaps even before, a growing chorus of economists have argued that the pace of American innovation has slowed.
Tyler Cowen of George Mason University contends that America and other advanced nations are entering a prolonged "great stagnation," in which obvious technological ideas have been largely exhausted and the rate of innovation and economic growth have slowed. In a much-cited paper, "Is US Economic Growth Over?" the economist Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern University concurs, providing empirical evidence that recent epochs of technological advance pale in comparison the great boom of the Industrial Revolution a century ago.