Let’s do a quick effort post. What economists call productivity growth is an error term! Saying productivity growth as a result is assuming a theoretical model that by definition has a large error term. This is problematic. Warning: Algebra

Let’s start with a standard Solow model to map a countries growth. This is basically

GDP = Productivity * Capital Stock * Labor.

There are some theoretical parameters I need to add here, but they aren’t important for my argument so I’m going to totally ignore them.

Multiplication is a total pain to estimate, so let’s do a trick to make it into addition (got to put logs on them, which is an algebra trick). I’m not going to add log() in front of everything to keep it more digestible. I’m going to completely ignore time series issues as well.

GDP = capital stock + labor + productivity
We can estimate this, roughly speaking. We know GDP, we can sort of measure capital stock, and we can sort of measure labor. Originally economists added up $ value of capital stock, and then used a countries total population.

Seems sketch to me, not everyone works in a country (also some people work more than others) and I genuinely don’t know how to value all the physical equipment in a country. I also think there are more things that are capital like besides physical capital (human capital etc.).

But that’s an aside. Thus assuming we have measured these exactly right, and gotten our measurements right (or at least, on average right), left over GDP must be from productivity.

So then
GDP = capital stock + labor + productivity is estimated by

GDP = $ of all physical capital + total population + error term (productivity)

Now a couple of comments

What do economists say we need to keep the economy growing in this model? Lots of productivity growth.
What do economists do to make this model fit the data well? Let productivity keep growing.
What would we predict if we got this model pretty wrong in some way? Large errors.

Wait shit that’s all the same thing.
As a result, we have no real idea what productivity growth is, because it’s literally an error term. Economists tried for a while figure it out. My understanding is that mostly failed.

Now some observations (including more normative claims).

Since this is an error term and was relatively unsuccessfully modeled to my knowledge, anyone claims they know what drive productivity growth in a modelling sense, is almost certainly full of shit.

Looking at GOP tax proposals that promise faster growth. There are others as well

2.A reason economists gave up on this is, IMO it’s not a very good question to ask. Some countries grow slower than others, but is “not using best technology” that convincing of an answer? I’m pretty most countries have access to computers

To answer the above question, you need to look at if a countries institutions are set up for more cooperation or just to exploit others, for a “deeper” reason.