Should the Personal Computer Be Considered a Technological Revolution? Evidence from U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Paul Beaudry, Mark Doms and Ethan Lewis

Journal of Political Economy, 2010, vol. 118, issue 5, 988 - 1036

Abstract: The introduction and diffusion of personal computers are widely viewed as a technological revolution. Using U.S. metropolitan area-level panel data, this paper asks whether links between PC adoption, educational attainment, and the return to skill conform to a model of technological revolutions in which the speed and extent of adoption are endogenous. The model implies that cities will adjust differently to the arrival of a more skill-intensive means of production, with the returns to skill increasing most where skill is abundant and its return is low. We show that the cross-city data fit many of the predictions of the model during the period 1980-2000, the PC diffusion era.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (182)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/658371 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/658371 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/658371

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().