This paper describes the adoption of automation technologies by US firms across all economic sectors by leveraging a new module introduced in the 2019 Annual Business Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau in partnership with the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)....

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a potentially important new technology, but its impact on the economy depends on the speed and intensity of adoption. This paper reports results from the first nationally representative U.S. survey of generative AI adoption at work and at home. In...

We estimate the effects of robot adoption on firm-level and worker-level outcomes in the Netherlands using a large employer-employee panel dataset spanning 2009-2020. Our firm-level results confirm previous findings, with positive effects on value added and hours worked for robot-adopting firms...

We study the staggered introduction of a generative AI-based conversational assistant using data from 5,179 customer support agents. Access to the tool increases productivity, as measured by issues resolved per hour, by 14 percent on average, with the greatest impact on novice and low-skilled...

We construct a grid that covers the key business functions of an establishment and the main technologies used in each of them. We populate this grid with data from over 20,000 establishments in 15 countries. We use this dataset to document novel "facts" about how establishments use technology,...

Economic models provide little insight into when the next big idea and its associated productivity dividend will come along. Once a general purpose technology (GPT) is identified, the economist's toolkit does provide an understanding when firms will adopt a new technology and for what purpose....

Transformative technologies like generative artificial intelligence promise to accelerate productivity growth across many sectors, but they also present new risks from potential misuse. We develop a multi-sector technology adoption model to study the optimal regulation of transformative...

This paper examines recent proposals and research suggesting that AI adoption should be delayed until its potential harms are properly understood. It is shown that conclusions regarding the social optimality of delayed AI adoption are sensitive to assumptions regarding the process by which...

Variation in technology adoption is a key driver of differences in productivity. Previous studies sought to explain variations in technology adoption by heterogeneity in profitability, costs of adoption, or other factors. Less is known about how adoption is affected by bias in the perceived...