Technology Sophistication Across Establishments

Diego Comin, Xavier Cirera and Marcio Cruz

No 33358, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines technology sophistication in establishments. To comprehensively measure technology sophistication, we create a grid that covers key business functions and the technologies used to conduct them. Analyzing data from over 21,000 establishments in 15 countries, we find that the most widely used technology is usually not the most sophisticated available in the business function. There is significant variation in technology sophistication across and within countries, explaining 31% of productivity dispersion and over half of the agricultural productivity gap. The sophistication of widely used technologies is more relevant for productivity than the most advanced technologies. More sophisticated technologies are appropriate for both developed and developing countries.

JEL-codes: O1 O3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-lma and nep-tid
Note: DAE DEV EFG IO PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33358.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Technology Sophistication across Establishments (2025)
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:nbr:nberwo:33358

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33358
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().