This paper develops a model of technological progress in the microprocessor industry that connects the seemingly disparate engineering and economic measures of technological progress. Technological progress in the microprocessor industry is driven by the repeated adoption of higher quality...

While the R&D intensive semiconductor tools industry has become pivotal to the advancement of technology and the growth of the downstream semiconductor chip manufacturing industry, this was not always the case. In the early stages of the industry, the chip manufacturers made their own tools...

This paper introduces an economically meaningful concept of generality of an input and defines a coefficient of technological generality, an intuitive measure of congruence in the R&D required for improving the quality of various adaptations of a general purpose input. It is shown in a...

We develop a model of competition in the solar panel industry. Solar firms manufacture panels that are differentiated both vertically and horizontally, and compete by setting quantities. The equilibrium of the model is consistent with a set of stylized facts that we document, including variation...

The rate of innovation in Information Technology (IT) has slowed down over time. The slowing down is evident from the data on quality adjusted price index of computers as well as the data on performance of microprocessors used in computers. The model in this paper shows that an IT-labor...

Technological progress in semiconductor chips plays a central role in enabling the Information Technology revolution. Continual technological progress in semiconductor chips, which has become popular under the name of Moore’s Law, reduces the cost of storing and processing information. While...