Opinion: Who Will Win the Prize? The world's best-performing economies change because each decade's problems are different.

Byline: Richard B. Freeman (Freeman teaches economics at Harvard University)

Too bad the Academy of the Dismal Science doesn't hand out Oscars for economic excellence. Throughout the '90s, the United States would have won, hands down. As in the movie business, however, it's tough to repeat in the economic world. In the 1980s, the winner was Japan, with lifetime employment and pay by seniority. In the 1970s, it was Germany: apprenticeship programs, workers on boards of directors, powerful unions and an extensive social-welfare system.

Today, it's anyone's guess. U.S. unemployment remains low, but the economy looks weaker than it has in a decade. Employment growth remains anemic. Highly educated workers watch as major firms move good jobs to India and China. The dollar has fallen and the trade deficit has risen to new heights. The fiscal deficit is projected to go on and on. If the United States were a developing country, the IMF would be prescribing hard medicine: cut the deficit (really), run a recession to reduce imports and produce more and cheaper exports, sell more companies and assets to China, Japan, Europe.

Many business leaders are betting on China as this decade's star. Growth has been exceptional, giving it the best-developing-country award for the 1990s. Starting as one of the poorest countries in the world (people were starving under Mao), China has modernized with extraordinary speed, investing massively in human as well as physical capital, and making rapid progress in high-tech sectors the United States has historically dominated. But China has its own weaknesses: huge urban/rural economic disparities that could produce social disorder, corruption and a weak legal system, a poorly functioning banking system, pollution, inadequate health care and the absence ...