Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in US Manufacturing
American Economic Review
vol. 104,
no. 5, May 2014
(pp. 394-99)
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 US 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 to 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.Citation
Acemoglu, Daron, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, and Brendan Price. 2014. "Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in US Manufacturing." American Economic Review, 104 (5): 394-99. DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.394Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
- L60 Industry Studies: Manufacturing: General
- O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes