As the cost of storing, sharing, and analyzing data has decreased, economic activity has become increasingly digital. But while the effects of digital technology and improved digital communication have been explored in a variety of contexts, the impact on economic activity—from consumer and...

We investigate product life cycles in the commercial mainframe computer market. We use hazard models with time-varying covariates to estimate the probability of product exit and Poisson models to estimate the probability of introduction. We measure the importance of different aspects of market...

We provide a framework and evidence to confront two contradictory yet common assertions: (1) new technology such as the Internet favors businesses in urban areas and (2) the Internet reduces the importance of distance for economic activity. Controlling for other factors, we show that...

This research examines the location choice of private schools entering the California schooling market in 1979-80. We find that entrants are more likely to locate in public school districts with lower levels of per-pupil expenditure and higher fractions of public school students who reside in...

We examine the relationship between the adoption of EMR and hospital operating costs. We first identify a puzzle that has been seen in prior studies: Adoption of EMR is associated with a slight cost increase. We draw on the literature on IT and productivity to demonstrate that the average effect...

We examine whether collective intelligence helps achieve a neutral point of view using data from a decade of Wikipedia's articles on US politics. Our null hypothesis builds on Linus' Law, often expressed as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Our findings are consistent with a narrow...

Researchers have long hypothesized that spillovers from government, university, and private company R&D contribute to economic growth, but these contributions may be difficult to measure when they take a non-pecuniary form. The growth of networking devices and the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s...