The purpose of this paper has been part methodological, part substantive. The methodological
contribution has been to outline the issues surrounding capital stock measurement
in the presence of embodied technological change and technological obsolescence. In particular,
the paper provides a number of arguments against the use of the NIPA computer
capital stocks for growth accounting and suggests an alternative approach. The substantive
contribution has been to document the role that computers have played in the recent
productivity performance of the U.S. economy: A marked pickup in the rate of computer
capital deepening combined with improved productivity in the computer-producing industry
have accounted for almost all of the recent acceleration in aggregate productivity