With tomorrow marking the arrival of the longest sustained economic boom in the nation's history, newspapers and magazines are full of analyses attempting to pinpoint the factors responsible.

In addition to citing new economic and political policies more favorable to growth and prosperity, many -- if not all -- of the articles give considerable credit to investment in technology throughout the period.

• U.S. businesses poured more than $2 trillion into computers, software and other technological products during the 1990s.

• Last year alone, corporate spending on technology grew 22 percent to $510 billion, accounting for more than 40 percent of all business investment.

• Such investments have boosted productivity an average of 2.6 percent a year since 1996 -- up sharply from the 1.4 percent average annual increase for the years 1974 to 1995.

• At 1.4 percent a year, living standards double in 50 year -- but at 2.6 percent, they double in just 27 years.

Typically, at this point in an expansion, productivity growth decelerates because companies are reaching deeper into their pile of investment ideas and hiring less-skilled workers. But this time is different, economists surmise, because technology has become so cheap and so pervasive that it is finally making an impact in the statistics.

Experts explain that increases in productivity are not confined to technology companies, but are shared by other industries that employ the tools of technology.

Economists had been puzzled why the payoff from technology didn't show up earlier. One explanation they advance is that the economy needed some time to learn how to achieve optimum employment of the new tools. It took awhile to learn.

Source: Scott Thurm, "Technology Spurs Economic Expansion," Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2000.