This paper exploits a unique offshoring survey to show that firms continue domestic production of the same goods they offshore to low-wage countries. This shift towards “produced-good imports” coincides with a reallocation of labor from physical production to innovation and technology...

Recent advances in information technology (IT) have enabled firms in many industries to give middle managers new access to timely production data. Process monitoring' technologies give distant managers a window to production which can both lower their cost of monitoring subordinates and provide...

Income inequalities have increased in most OECD countries over the past decades; particularly the income share of the top 1%. In this paper we argue that the growing importance of digital innovation – new products and processes based on software code and data – has increased market rents,...

As it becomes cheaper to copy and share digital content, vendors are turning to technical protections such as encryption. We argue that if protection is nevertheless imperfect, this transition will generally lower the prices of content relative to perfect legal enforcement. However, the effect...

Globally, an estimated 734 million jobs will be required between 2010 and 2030 to accommodate recent and ongoing demographic shifts, account for plausible changes in labour force participation rates, and achieve target unemployment rates of at or below 4 percent for adults and at or below 8...

We study why acquisitions of entrant firms by an incumbent can deter innovation and entry in the digital platform industry, where there are strong network externalities and some customers face switching costs. A high probability of an acquisition induces some potential early adopters to wait for...

Aging populations in advanced economies are placing ever-increasing demands on government spending in the form of old-age benefits. Economies that have promised substantially more benefits than they have made provision to finance are heading into a prolonged era of fiscal stress. Unresolved...

Using a recursive empirical model of the real interest rate, GDP growth, and the primary government deficit in the U.S., I solve for the ergodic distribution of the debt/GDP ratio. If such a distribution exists, the government is satisfying its intertemporal budget constraint. One key finding is...