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Conference Paper
The resurgence of growth in the late 1990s: is information technology the story?
The performance of the U.S. economy over the past several years has been remarkable, including a rebound in labor productivity growth after nearly a quarter century of sluggish gains. To assess the role of information technology in the recent rebound, this paper re-examines the growth contribution of computers and related inputs with the same neoclassical framework that we have used in earlier work. ; Our results indicate that the contribution to productivity growth from the use of information technology - including computer hardware, software, and communication equipment - surged in the ...
Working Paper
Computers, obsolescence, and productivity
This paper examines the role that computers have played in boosting U.S. economic growth in recent years. The paper focuses on two effects--the effect of increased productivity in the computer-producing sector and the effect of investments in computing equipment on the productivity of those who use them--and concludes that together they account for almost all of the recent acceleration in U.S. labor productivity. In calculating the computer-usage effect, standard NIPA measures of the capital stock are inappropriate for growth accounting because they do not account for technological ...
Working Paper
Prices for local area network equipment
In this paper we examine quality-adjusted prices for local area network (LAN) equipment. Hedonic regressions are used to estimate price changes for the two largest classes of LAN equipment, routers and switches. A matched model was used for LAN cards and the prices for hubs were inferred by using an economic relationship to switches. Overall, we find that prices for the four groups of LAN equipment fell at a 17 percent annual rate between 1995 and 2000. These results stand in sharp contrast to the PPI for communications equipment that is nearly flat over the 1990s.
Working Paper
A guide to the use of chain aggregated NIPA data
In 1996, the U.S. Department of Commerce began using a new method to construct all aggregate ``real'' series in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA). This method employs the so-called ``ideal chain index'' pioneered by Irving Fisher. The new methodology has some extremely important implications that are unfamiliar to many practicing empirical economists; as a result, mistaken calculations with NIPA data have become very common. This paper explains the motivation for the switch to chain aggregation and then illustrates the usage of chain-aggregated data with three topical examples, ...
Journal Article
CEOs, clerks, computers, and the rise of competition in the late 20th century.
Leonard Nakamura suggests that a new era of heightened creative destruction that began in the late 1970s also ushered in a new era of heightened competition. Such intensified competition has made leaders of large industrial enterprises vulnerable to a level of uncertainty previously reserved for managers of small and new firms. Consequently, managerial careers now less often have benign endings. The story was much different during the previous 100 years. From the 1870s to the 1970s, however, the large industrial corporation was highly stable partly because of investments in a corporate ...
Journal Article
The computer evolution
In this Economic Letter, we use data from five special surveys, covering the period 1984-2001, to examine two key aspects of the computer evolution: the spread of PCs at work and the evolving wage differentials between individuals who use them and those who do not. Although the spread of computers has been relatively uniform across labor force groups, the wage returns associated with computers tilted sharply in favor of the highly educated at the end of our sample frame. This finding appears consistent with the increase in trend productivity growth that occurred around the same time.
Journal Article
Policy statement issued on year 2000 issues