“Most of the writing you see about the economy speaks to narrow questions: What will growth be this year? When will the unemployment rate get back to normal? And so on. But the things that will determine standards of living a generation from now have almost nothing to do with this month’s jobs report or the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting. Those determinants, instead, depend on companies’ innovations — in particular, whether those innovations turn out to have major economic consequences. Researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute have a new study in which they have taken their best shot at predicting exactly that.”
