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Working Paper
Computerizing Households and the Role of Investment-Specific Productivity in Business Cycles
Advancements in computer technology have reshaped not only business operations but also household consumption. We estimate a business-cycle model disaggregating consumer IT and non-IT durable goods from the capital stock. We find that shocks to the supply of IT durables account for more than half of the variation in house- holds' real expenditure on IT durables. Furthermore, investment-specific productivity shocks drove nearly half of the rapid growth in household durable expenditures during the 2000s. Nonetheless, they have small influence over output dynamics, because unlike business ...