IT, Productivity and Growth in Enterprises

Abstract

The relationship between information technology (IT), productivity, and growth has been established at the aggregate level. However, the mechanism through which the effect operates at the level of specific businesses remains unclear. Statistical agencies have developed indicators of businesses’ readiness to use IT (e.g. the IT infrastructure, diffusion of specific technologies), and some indicators on actual usage (e.g. purposes, frequency of use). The next phase is developing estimates of the impact of IT use. A recent OECD study addressed this question using aggregate data for OECD countries, and micro data for Germany and the United States. A second phase of the OECD study envisions a series of two- and three-country studies making use of newly available micro data for roughly a dozen countries. This paper outlines one such study, a three-country project addressing the impact of IT use in Denmark, Japan, and the United States. Each country recently collected new data at the level of specific businesses on the use of IT by businesses, and has conducted preliminary analyses of its own data. Each country also has different underlying market and institutional structures. The next phase of this project will be to develop estimates of the impact of IT use based on these new micro data, developing and testing hypotheses that acknowledge differences among the countries in market and institutional structures...