Productivity IV: What can Government do?

Government clout, when used wisely, can have an extremely positive effect on productivity. The problem is that there is no clear-cut pain to efficacy of government influence for that purpose. What looks wise in retrospect may have been, at the time of decision, no more or less brilliant than other comparable decisions that proved to be ineffective, or even adverse. In fact, as author Nash points out in the following article, government influence is frequently ignored because major technological innovation ¿ and the attendant productivity improvement ¿ do look so simple in retrospect.