As more and more activities in the economy become digitized, analytics and data-driven decision-making (DDD) are becoming increasingly important. The adoption of analytics and DDD has been slower in small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) compared to large firms, and reliable causal estimates of the...

This paper studies the economics behind the investment in information technologies (IT) by U.S. commercial banks in the past decade. By linking banks' IT spending to their lending technologies, we analyze the distinctive natures of banks' dealings with information across various lending...

How prevalent are severe software vulnerabilities, how fast do software users respond to the availability of secure versions, and what determines the variance in the installation distribution? Using the largest dataset ever assembled on user updates, tracking server software updates by over...

We estimate an insurer-specific preference function which rationalizes hospital referrals for privately-insured births in California. The function is additively separable in: a hospital price paid by the insurer, the distance traveled, and plan and severity-specific hospital fixed effects...

The theory of cost-shifting posits that nonprofit hospitals respond to negative financial shocks by raising prices for privately insured patients. We examine how hospitals responded to the sharp reductions in their endowments caused by the 2008 stock market collapse. We find that the average...

What is the impact and value of hurricane forecasts? We study this question using newly-collected forecast data for major US hurricanes since 2005. We find higher wind speed forecasts increase pre-landfall protective spending, but erroneous under-forecasts increase post-landfall damage and...

This paper provides direct empirical evidence on the relationship between technology and firms' global sourcing strategies. Using new data on U.S. firms' decisions to contract for manufacturing services from domestic or foreign suppliers, I show that a firm's adoption of communication technology...

We study the effect of hospital adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) on health outcomes, particularly patient safety indicators (PSIs). We find evidence of a positive impact of EMRs on PSIs via decision support rather than care coordination. Consistent with this mechanism, we find an...

Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? And is this technological change skill biased or factor neutral? We exploit rich Norwegian data to answer these questions. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points, and...

We examine the relationship between the adoption of EMR and hospital operating costs. We first identify a puzzle that has been seen in prior studies: Adoption of EMR is associated with a slight cost increase. We draw on the literature on IT and productivity to demonstrate that the average effect...