This paper assesses how the adoption of a range of digital technologies affects firm productivity. It combines cross-country firm-level data on productivity and industry-level data on digital technology adoption in an empirical framework that accounts for firm heterogeneity. The results provide...

The wave of digital-industrial innovation which begins to disrupt vast sectors of the global economy has fueled fear of a potential adverse impact on jobs and wages. This paper argues that digitalindustrial innovations make human capital more important than ever and the focus needs to shift to...

Insufficient diffusion of new technologies has been quoted as one possible reason for weak productivity performance over the past two decades (Andrews et al., 2016). This paper uses a novel data set of digital technology usage covering 25 industries in 25 European countries over the 2010-16...

In den entwickelten Volkswirtschaften ist das Produktivitätswachstum seit den 1970er Jahren tendenziell gesunken, zeigen die Statistiken–eine Beobachtung, die angesichts der weitreichenden Digitalisierung der Wirtschaft erstaunt. Sie könnte auf Messfehlern beruhen, ist sie aber realistisch,...

A new wave of innovation is beginning to disrupt industry on a global scale. It constitutes a tremendous opportunity for faster productivity growth, but also a potential disruption to a number of economic sectors and to job markets. Academic research and the public debate have focused mostly on...

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers’ convergence could therefore...

Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the related "social distancing" measures, working from home (WfH) has suddenly become a crucial lever of economic activity. This paper combines survey and administrative data to compute measures for the feasibility of working from home among German employees....

We propose an index of working from home (WfH) capacity for industries and counties in the German economy. Our analysis draws on individual-level survey information and administrative employment statistics. We find that overall 56 percent of jobs are suitable for part-time or fulltime remote...

The paper examines how Canadian manufacturing plants have responded to reductions in tariff barriers between Canada and the rest of world over the past two decades. Three main conclusions emerge from the analysis. First, trade liberalization was a significant factor behind the strong export...

Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the related "social distancing" measures, working from home (WfH) has suddenly become a crucial lever of economic activity. This paper combines survey and administrative data to compute measures for the feasibility of working from home among German employees....