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Working Paper
Data, Privacy Laws and Firm Production: Evidence from the GDPR
By regulating how firms collect, store, and use data, privacy laws may change the role of data in production and alter firm demand for information technology inputs. We study how firms respond to privacy laws in the context of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by using seven years of data from a large global cloud-computing provider. Our difference-in-difference estimates indicate that, in response to the GDPR, EU firms decreased data storage by 26% and data processing by 15% relative to comparable U.S. firms, becoming less “data-intensive.” To estimate the costs of the ...
Working Paper
The Poverty of Macroeconomics --- What the Chemical Revolution Tells Us about Neoclassical Production Function
Quantitative macroeconomics is often portrayed as a science—because of its intensive use of high-powered mathematics—with the possible limitation of being unable to conduct controlled experiments. To qualify as a science, however, theories in that discipline must meet a minimum number of criteria: (i) It has explanatory power to explain phenomena; (ii) it has predictive power to yield quantifiable and falsifiable statements about new phenomenon; and (iii) it has operational power to change the world. A scientific theory consists of axioms and working hypotheses that facilitate the ...