Can we see the computer age in the productivity statistics? Robert Solow famously said:


  You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics


This quote is often linked with the productivity paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox), such that we don't see mayor productivity growth from new tech.

But there is something I don't understand. Economic growth is about percentage growth. A graph of GDP looks like an exponential function. So nominally a 5% growth is much much higher when the economy is that of the US than that of Malawi.

So we might not see an acceleration of economic growth, but we at least see continued growth, which allegedly becomes harder and harder as economies develop. This is the idea behind Solow's model, where without an exogenous percentage growth in A, output converges to the steady state.

So I don't really understand the problem. To me, computers are clearly visible in a growing economy. But this seems to be unsatisfactory for Solow, who wants to see what, a 10% growth rate? 

What's wrong in my thinking?
It means that computers (or IT in general) contribute to the society (they make us better off and more productive at work), but this does not show up in GDP statistics. The reason is that many of these services are for free. As an example, the value of the Google Search is not reflected in a market price for running this search. The problem is related to the societal value of mothers raising their children at home. Other examples are environmental protection or caring for your parents. Since these services are not traded on markets, it does not enter GDP. Whether the Solow quote is actually true is however debatable. The value of the google search engine is to some extent reflected in the advertisement google is selling. And this enters GDP statistics. The relation with the productivity puzzle is whether productivity is actually falling or whether we need new concepts to measure productivity in the computer age.