Economist Robert Solow once quipped that the computer age could be seen “everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
Solow was talking about the productivity paradox uncovered in the 1980s, when the ramping up of spending on IT failed to show up in the numbers for economic output. A note out today from Deutsche Bank asks whether we’ll see a similar paradox emerge when it comes to working from home. It just so happens to have landed the same day Deutsche announced its own hybrid model, with Bloomberg reporting that the lender would allow remote working for up to three days a week.
The blame for the computer productivity paradox came down to four main factors. From the Deutsche note: