Computer Networks and Productivity Revisited: Does Plant Size Matter? Evidence and Implications

Henry Hyatt and Sang Nguyen

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Numerous studies have documented a positive association between information technology (IT) investments and business- and establishment-level productivity, but these studies usually pay sole or disporportionate attention to small- or medium-sized entities. In this paper, we revisit the evidence for manufacturing plants presented in Atrostic and Nguyen (2005) and show that the positive relationship between computer networks and labor productivity is only found among small- and medium-sized plants. Indeed, for larger plants the relationship is negative, and employment-weighted estimates indicate computer networks have a negative relationship with the productivity of employees, on average. These findings indicate that computer network investments may have an ambiguous relationship with aggregate labor productivity growth.

JEL-codes: L6 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2010-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-ind and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2010/CES-WP-10-25.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Computer networks and productivity revisited: Does plant size matter? Evidence and implications (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:10-25

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