Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in US Manufacturing

Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Brendan Price

American Economic Review, 2014, vol. 104, issue 5, 394-99

Abstract: An increasingly influential "technological-discontinuity" paradigm suggests that IT-induced technological changes are rapidly raising productivity while making workers redundant. This paper explores the evidence for this view among the IT-using US manufacturing industries. There is some limited support for more rapid productivity growth in IT-intensive industries depending on the exact measures, though not since the late 1990s. Most challenging to this paradigm, and to our expectations, is that output contracts in IT-intensive industries relative to the rest of manufacturing. Productivity increases, when detectable, result from the even faster declines in employment.

JEL-codes: J24 L60 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.394
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (136)

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Working Paper: Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in U.S. Manufacturing (2014)
Working Paper: Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in U.S. Manufacturing (2014)
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