Working Paper: NBER ID: w12677
Authors: Diego A. Comin; Bart Hobijn; Emilie Rovito
Abstract: We present evidence on the differences in the intensity with which ten major technologies are used in 185 countries across the world. We do so by calculating how many years ago these technologies were used in the U.S. at the same intensity as they are used in the countries in our sample. We denote these time lags as technology usage lags and compare them with lags in real GDP per capita. We find that (i) technology usage lags are large, often comparable to lags in real GDP per capita, (ii) usage lags are highly correlated with lags in per-capita income, and (iii) usage lags are highly correlated across technologies. The productivity differentials between the state of the art technologies that we consider and the ones they replace combined with the usage lags that we document, lead us to infer that technology usage disparities might account for a large part of cross-country TFP differentials.
Keywords: technology; usage lags; cross-country; GDP; TFP
JEL Codes: O33; O47; O57
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| technology usage lags (L96) | economic output (E23) |
| technology usage lags (L96) | per capita income levels (D31) |
| technology usage lags (L96) | total factor productivity (TFP) differentials (O49) |
| intensity of technology use (O33) | economic output (E23) |
| technology usage lags (L96) | usage lags across different technologies (L96) |
| intensity of new technology adoption (O33) | economic development (O29) |