Cloud computing enables a shift in the costs of ICT adoption from investment in fixed capital to pay-on-demand services allowing firms to scale and reorganize. Using new firm-level data we examine the impact of cloud on firm growth, using zip-code-level instruments of the timing of high-speed...

The advent of cloud computing promises to improve the way firms utilize IT solutions. Firms are expected to replace large and inflexible fixed-cost investments in IT with more targeted variable spending in cloud solutions. In addition, cloud usage is expected to increase the productivity of...

This paper studies the impact of technological architecture around data storage and processing on the performance of large financial corporations after being exposed to more stringent data privacy regulations. A modular approach to cloud adoption - which reflects in the lack of data...

The arrival of cloud computing provides firms a new way to access digital technologies as digital services. Yet, capital incentive policies present in every OECD country are still targeted towards investments in informational technology (IT) capital. If cloud services are partial substitutes for...

The diffusion of social media coincided with a worsening of mental health conditions among adolescents and young adults in the United States, giving rise to speculation that social media might be detrimental to mental health. In this paper, we provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact...

This paper studies the social and economic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in a large sample of countries. I stress, in particular, the importance of countries' interconnections to un-derstand the spread of the virus. I estimate a Global VAR model and exploit a dataset on existing social...

This paper considers how sanctions affected the Iranian economy using a novel measure of sanctions intensity based on daily newspaper coverage. It finds sanctions to have significant effects on exchange rates, inflation, and output growth, with the Iranian rial over-reacting to sanctions,...

This study provides new causal evidence for the impact of a large-scale natural disaster on local economic activity in Iran using nighttime light intensity. We apply the synthetic control method (SCM) and nighttime light (NTL) data from 1992 to 2020 for 31 provinces and 429 counties to study the...

The highly dynamic nature of the COVID-19 crisis poses an unprecedented challenge to policy makers around the world to take appropriate income-stabilizing countermeasures. To properly design such policy measures, it is important to quantify their effects in real-time. However, data on the...