This paper estimates the relative price sensitivity of individuals' choice of whether to buy computers online versus in retail stores using a new data source on the computer purchase behavior of more than 20,000 people. To estimate the degree of competition between the two channels, the paper...

In this paper, we examine the sources of the productivity growth in the U.S. computer industry from 1978 to 1999. We estimate a joint production model of output quantity and quality that distinguishes two types of technological changes: process and product innovations. Based on the estimation...

This paper compares the impact of new IT-enhanced technology on the efficiency of production in the U.S. and the U.K. for one manufacturing industry, valve manufacturing. There is a long-standing question of whether technological change and organizational changes have the same rates of adoption...

We thank Lakshmi Aiyar, Shawn Cole, Stijn Claessens, Oded Galor, Adair Morse, Mark Rosenzweig, Jeremy Stein, as well as participants in seminars at the IMF, the NBER Political Economy, Corporate Finance, and Growth Workshops, M.I.T., Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the WFA...

We provide evidence that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, micro-level data on their views regarding the...

The impact of patent pools on the rate and direction of technological change is an open question in both theoretical and empirical studies. Economic theory makes no unequivocal prediction. By contrast, empirical studies of patent pools, to date, have largely concluded that patent pools have been...

In Silicon Valley's computer cluster, skilled employees are reported to move rapidly between competing firms. This job-hopping facilitates the reallocation of resources towards firms with superior innovations, but it also creates human capital externalities that reduce incentives to invest in...

We study the innovation and diffusion of technology at the industry level. We derive the full dynamic paths of an industry's evolution, from birth to its maturity, and we characterize the impact of diffusion on the incentive to innovate. The model implies that protection of innovators should be...

We argue that existence of public good does not necessarily imply market failure, and illustrate this point in the context of international trade. An influential hypothesis states that export pioneers are too few relative to social optimum because the first exporter's action creates an...

This paper examines two potential channels of knowledge acquisition that underlie firm productivity growth in the Taiwanese electronics industry: participation in the export market and investments in Ramp;D and/or worker training. We focus on the argument that a firm's own investments in Ramp;D...