How do computers affect productivity? Many recent studies argue that using information technology, particularly computers, is a significant source of U.S. productivity growth. The specific mechanism remains elusive. Detailed data on the use of computers and computer networks have been scarce....

Business use of computers in the United States dates back fifty years. Simply investing in information technology is unlikely to offer a competitive advantage today. Differences in how businesses use that technology should drive differences in economic performance. Our previous research found...

This paper examines the relationship between computer network use and firms’ productivity performance, using micro-data of the United States and Japan. To our knowledge, this is the first comparative analysis using firm-level data for the manufacturing sector of both countries. We find that...

Researchers in a large empirical literature find significant relationships between computers and labor productivity, but the estimated size of that relationship varies considerably. In this paper, we estimate the relationships among computers, computer networks, and plant-level productivity in...