The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Brynjolfsson, Erik; Rock, Daniel; Syverson, Chad
• 署名单位: Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Pennsylvania; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20180386
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 333-372
• 关键词: information-technology; technical change; GROWTH; INVESTMENT; INNOVATION; PARADOX; steam; firm

摘要

General purpose technologies (GPTs) like AI enable and require significant complementary investments. These investments are often intangible and poorly measured in national accounts. We develop a model that shows how this can lead to underestimation of productivity growth in a new GPTs early years and, later, when the benefits of intangible investments are harvested, productivity growth overestimation. We call this phenomenon the Productivity J-curve. We apply our method to US data and find that adjusting for intangibles related to computer hardware and software yields a HP level that is 15.9 percent higher than official measures by the end of 2017.