Results

CentrePiece article

Polarisation is not a myth

Political views shape the creation and spread of technology...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

AI unbound: digital infrastructure, AI adoption, and firm performance

We study how digital infrastructure relaxes constraints on the diffusion and economic impact of artificial intelligence (AI). Using administrative data and a nationally representative enterprise survey from Turkey (2021?...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology spillovers, diffusion and rivalry in firm networks

We examine how upstream firms' technology adoption affects the performance and adoption decisions of downstream partners. Using business-to-business data with administrative records on advanced technology adoption, we fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How ICT shapes wages, working conditions, and job satisfaction

We study how the widespread diffusion of ICT affects wages, working conditions, and job satisfaction. We frame our empirical investigation with a model in which ICT can improve both wages and working conditions by increa...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Human after all: occupations at the core of AI adoption

This paper investigates how firms? occupational structure shapes the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) using matched administrative data on French firms and relying on an instrumental variable Probit model. We ide...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Technology spillovers, diffusion, and rivalry in firm networks

Quantifying technology adoption, spillovers, and diffusion across firms is crucial for understanding industry dynamics, and in turn countries' growth. This column combines firm-level input-output VAT data from Turkey wit...Read more...

Journal article

Industrial and Corporate Change:

More or the same? Radical, disruptive, discontinuous, and breakthrough innovation

This paper addresses the conceptual ambiguity in the literature on exceptional innovations, labeled ?radical,? ?disruptive,? ?breakthrough,? or ?discontinuous.? A bibliometric analysis of 4407 articles shows that differe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The role of human capital for AI adoption: evidence from French firms

We leverage a uniquely comprehensive combination of data sources to explore the enabling role of human capital in fostering the adoption of predictive AI systems in French firms. Using a causal estimation approach, we sh...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The new wave? The role of human capital and STEM skills in technology adoption in the UK

Which types of human capital influence the adoption of advanced technologies? We study the skill biased adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) across two waves in the UK. Specifically, we compare th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and the end of antiquity

What caused the end of antiquity, the shift of economic activity away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe? We assemble a large database of coin flows between the 4th and 10th century and use it to document the...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Individual consequences of occupational decline

We assess the career earnings losses that individual Swedish workers suffered when their occupations' employment declined. High-quality data allow us to overcome sorting into declining occupations on various attributes, ...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Communications:

The effect of Covid certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy

In the COVID-19 pandemic many countries required COVID certificates, proving vaccination, recovery, or a recent negative test, to access public and private venues. We estimate their effect on vaccine uptake for France, G...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Innovative events: product launches, innovation and firm performance

In this paper, we shed new light on the links between firm-level innovation and growth. We introduce data that capture a difficult-to-observe aspect of firms' innovative activity ? new product/service launches ? at scale...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The best versus the rest: divergence across firms during the global productivity slowdown

We document that labor productivity of the globally most productive firms ? the ?frontier? ? has diverged from all other firms ? the ?rest? ? throughout the 2000s. This divergence remains after controlling for capital in...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Reprint of: Teaching assistants, computers and classroom management

Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate how resources may be used within classrooms to rei...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Teaching assistants, computers and classroom management

Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate how resources may be used within classrooms to rei...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovative events

We take a fresh look at firms? innovation-productivity linkages, using novel data capturing new aspects of innovative activity. We combine UK administrative microdata, media and website content to develop experimental me...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Spatial imaginaries and tech cities: place-branding East London's digital economy

We explore place branding as an economic development strategy for technology clusters, using London?s `Tech City? initiative as a case study. We site place branding in a larger family of policies that develop spatial ima...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Improving literacy through teaching assistants

Teaching assistants are employed in most primary schools in England, but until now, little has been known about what contribution they make to educational outcomes. Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela assess the i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teaching assistants, computers and classroom management: evidence from a randomised control trial

Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate a programme that involves changing how resources a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Geography, ties and knowledge flows: evidence from citations in mathematics

Using data on academic citations, career and educational histories of mathematicians, and disaggregated distance data for the world's top 1000 math departments, we study how geography and ties affect knowledge flows amon...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The diffusion of knowledge via managers' mobility

Better managers and managerial practices lead to better firm performance. Yet, little is known about what happens when managers move across firms. Does a firm hiring a good manager improve its performance? If yes is ther...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Colocation and knowledge diffusion: evidence from million dollar plants

This paper uses the entry of large corporations into U.S. counties during the 1980s and 1990s to analyse the effect of plant opening on knowledge spillovers to local inventors. We use a difference-in-differences identifi...Read more...

Journal article

Water Economics and Policy:

Invention and diffusion of water supply and water efficiency technologies: insights from a global patent dataset

This paper identifies over 50,000 patents filed worldwide in various water-related technologies between 1990 and 2010, distinguishing between those related to availability (supply) and conservation (demand) technologies....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Patents and the global diffusion of new drugs

This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dynamic selection: an idea flows theory of entry, trade and growth

This paper develops an idea flows theory of trade and growth with heterogeneous firms. New firms learn from incumbent firms, but the diffusion technology ensures entrants learn not only from frontier technologies, but fr...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Does management matter? Evidence from India

A long-standing question is whether differences in management practices across firms can explain differences in productivity, especially in developing countries where these spreads appear particularly large. To investiga...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brain Drain or Brain Gain? Technology Diffusion and Learning On-the-job

This paper develops a theory of technology transfer when technology is embodied in human capital and learning requires on-the-job communication between managers and workers. Patterns of knowledge diffusion depend on wher...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Management Matter? Evidence from India

A long-standing question in social science is to what extent differences in management cause differences in firm performance. To investigate this we ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms. We pro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Long Term Implications of the ICT Revolution: Applying the Lessons of Growth Theory and Growth Accounting

How big a boost to long run growth can countries expect from the ICT revolution? I use the results of growth accounting and the insights from a two-sector growth model to answer this question. The use of a two-sector rat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spreading the Word: Geography, Policy and Knowledge Spillovers

Using new data on citations to university patents and scientific publications, we study how geography affects university knowledge spillovers. Citations to patents decline sharply with distance up to about 150 miles and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Convergence of Firm-Level Productivity, Globalisation, Information Technology and Competition: Evidence from France

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch ...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

The Impact of Computer Use, Computer Skills and Computer Use Intensity: Evidence from WERS 2004.

Computers and ICT have changed the way we live and work. The latest WERS 2004 provides a snapshot of how using ICT at the workplace has changed our working lives. Various studies have suggested that the use of a computer...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

New technology in schools: is there a payoff?

Despite its high relevance to current policy debates, estimating the causal effect of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investment on educational standards remains fraught with difficulties. We exploit a cha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Information and Communication Technologies on Urban Structure

The geographic concentration of economic activity occurs because transport costs for goods, people and ideas give individuals and organisations incentives to locate close to each other. Historically, all of these costs h...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Use IT or Lose IT? The Impact of Computers on Earnings

The extent to which the impact of computer skills depends on how computers are used is investigated using British data from an establishment survey, cohort studies and the European E-Living survey. We examine the importa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity and ICT: A Review of the Evidence

We survey the micro and macro literature on the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on productivity. The ?Solow Paradox? of the absence of an impact of ICT on productivity no longer holds, if it e...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

New Technology in Schools: Is There a Payoff?

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity Growth and the Role of ICT in the United Kingdom: An Industry View, 1970-2000

We use a new industry-level dataset to quantify the role of ICT in explaining productivity growth in the UK, 1970-2000. The dataset is for 34 industries covering the whole economy (31 in the market sector). Using growth ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Catching a Wave: the Adoption of Voice and High Commitment Workplace Practices in Britain: 1984-1998

In this paper we treat workplace voice and systems of high-commitment human resource management (HCHRM) as technological innovations in order to account for the uneven diffusion patterns observed across establishments. U...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalisation, ICT and the Nitty Gritty of Plant Level Datasets

The net entry contribution to aggregate productivity growth has increased dramatically in the UK over 1990s according to calculations based on data from the Annual Respondents Database (ARD). Some recent studies have tri...Read more...