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Working Paper
Technology adoption, mortality and population dynamics
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality trends and population dynamics. Our theory emphasizes individual choices on costly adoption of healthy technologies and diffusion of knowledge about infections as a key channel for reducing mortality. Our theory is consistent with three observations on mortality: (i) The cross-country correlation between levels of mortality and income is negative; (ii) mortality in poor countries has converged to that of rich countries despite no convergence in income; and (iii) economic growth is not a prerequisite for mortality to decline. We calibrate our model ...
Briefing
Innovation, Diffusion and Intellectual Property Rights
Our recent working paper studies innovation and diffusion of technology along an industry's evolution and characterizes how diffusion affects the incentives to innovate. In our analysis, firms participate in a competitive industry and face production capacity constraints. The entry of imitators thus increases industry supply and is socially beneficial to a degree. We show that, from the social welfare point of view, innovators should be compensated for intellectual property rights to internalize their knowledge spillovers to imitators. However, such compensation should be only partial due to ...
Working Paper
The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a potentially important new technology, but its impact on the economy depends on the speed and intensity of adoption. This paper reports results from the first nationally representative U.S. survey of generative AI adoption at work and at home. In August 2024, 39 percent of the U.S. population age 18-64 used generative AI. More than 24 percent of workers used it at least once in the week prior to being surveyed, and nearly one in nine used it every workday. Historical data on usage and mass-market product launches suggest that U.S. adoption of ...
Working Paper
The Geography of Business Dynamism and Skill-Biased Technical Change
This paper shows that the growing disparities between big and small cities in the U.S. since 1980 can be explained by firms endogenously responding to a skill-biased technology shock. With the introduction of a new skill-biased technology that is high fixed cost but low marginal cost, firms endogenously adopt more in big cities, cities that offer abundant amenities for high-skilled workers, and cities that are more productive in using high-skilled labor. In cities with more adoption, small and unproductive firms are more likely to exit the market, increasing the equilibrium rate of turnover ...
Working Paper
The Rise of AI Pricing: Trends, Driving Forces, and Implications for Firm Performance
We document key stylized facts about the time-series trends and cross-sectional distributions of AI pricing and study its implications for firm performance, both on average and conditional on monetary policy shocks. We use the universe of online job posting data from Lightcast to measure the adoption of AI pricing. We infer that a firm is adopting AI pricing if it posts a job opening that requires AI-related skills and contains the keyword “pricing.” At the aggregate level, the share of AI-pricing jobs in all pricing jobs has increased by more than tenfold since 2010. The increase in ...
Working Paper
The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a potentially important new technology, but its impact on the economy depends on the speed and intensity of adoption. This paper reports results from a series of nationally representative U.S. surveys of generative AI use at work and at home. As of late 2024, nearly 40% of the U.S. population age 18-64 uses generative AI. 23% of employed respondents had used generative AI for work at least once in the previous week, and 9% used it every work day. Relative to each technology’s first mass-market product launch, work adoption of generative AI has been ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Vehicle Fuel Economy Standards on Technology Adoption
Many countries are tightening passenger vehicle fuel economy standards. The literature on passenger vehicle standards has used structural models to estimate their welfare effects. This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of recently tightened fuel economy standards on technology adoption. Specifically, it investigates changes in the rate and direction of technology adoption, that is, the extent to which technology is used to increase fuel economy at the expense of other vehicle attributes. We find that recent U.S. and European standards have both increased the rate of ...
Working Paper
The Geography of Business Dynamism and Skill Biased Technical Change
This paper shows that the growing regional disparities in the U.S. since 1980 can be explained by firms endogenously responding to a skill-biased technology shock. With the introduction of a new skill-biased technology that is high fixed cost but low marginal cost, firms endogenously adopt more in big cities, cities that offer abundant amenities for high-skilled workers, and cities that are more productive in using high-skilled labor. In cities with more adoption, small and unproductive firms are more likely to exit the market, increasing the equilibrium rate of turnover or business ...
Working Paper
The Adoption of Non-Rival Inputs and Firm Scope
Custom software is distinct from other types of capital in that it is non-rival---once a firm makes an investment in custom software, it can be used simultaneously across its many establishments. Using confidential US Census data, we document that while firms with more establishments are more likely to invest in custom software, they spend less on it as a share of total capital expenditure. We explain these empirical patterns by developing a model that incorporates the non-rivalry of custom software. In the model, firms choose whether to adopt custom software, the intensity of their ...