Cloud computing and firm growth

Timothy DeStefano, Richard Kneller and Jonathan Timmis ()

No 2019-09, Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, GEP

Abstract: The arrival of the cloud has enabled a shift in the nature of ICT use, from investment in sunk capital to a pay-on-demand service that allows firms to rapidly scale up. This paper uses new firm-level data to examine the impact of cloud on firm growth in the UK, using zipcode-level instruments of the timing of high-speed fibre availability and expected speeds. We find cloud leads to the growth of young firms in terms of employment and productivity, but they become more concentrated in fewer plants. For older firms we find no scale or productivity growth, but instead disperse activity by closing plants and moving employment further from the headquarters. In addition, the plants that close tend to be those without access to fibre broadband.

Keywords: firm growth; the cloud; ICT use; employment; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-ent, nep-eur, nep-ict, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/gep/documents/papers/2019/2019-09.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cloud Computing and Firm Growth (2020)
Working Paper: Cloud computing and firm growth (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:not:notgep:2019-09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, GEP School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hilary Hughes ().