Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in US Manufacturing
Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Brendan Price
American Economic Review · 2014 · Volume 104 · Issue 5
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.
Keywords
Human Capital, Skills, Occupational Choice, Labor Productivity, Industry Studies: Manufacturing: General, Technological Change: Choices and Consequences, Diffusion Processes
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