Working Paper: NBER ID: w19837
Authors: Daron Acemoglu; David Autor; David Dorn; Gordon H. Hanson; Brendan Price
Abstract: An increasingly influential "technological-discontinuity" paradigm suggests that IT-induced technological changes are rapidly raising productivity while making workers redundant. This paper explores the evidence for this view among the IT-using U.S. manufacturing industries. There is some limited support for more rapid productivity growth in IT-intensive industries depending on the exact measures, though not since the late 1990s. Most challenging to this paradigm, and our expectations, is that output contracts in IT-intensive industries relative to the rest of manufacturing. Productivity increases, when detectable, result from the even faster declines in employment.
Keywords: Information Technology; Productivity; Employment; Manufacturing
JEL Codes: J20; L60; O30
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| IT investment (G31) | productivity outcomes (O49) |
| IT investment (G31) | productivity growth in IT-intensive industries (O49) |
| productivity growth in IT-intensive industries (O49) | decrease in output (E23) |
| productivity growth in IT-intensive industries (O49) | decrease in employment (J63) |
| absence of significant productivity growth in IT-intensive industries (O49) | challenges to IT's positive transformation (O33) |