We examine the long-term labor market impact of the steam engine, an early general-purpose technology, by linking newly digitized 19th-century records from Prussia to modern German labor market data (1975-2019). Regions with a higher concentration of steam engines per worker in 1875 exhibit...

This study examines the effects of the russia's full-scale invasion on the Ukrainian corporate labor market. We use the DID technique to analyze a panel data set of over 100,000 firms linked to geolocation and industry data spanning 2021-2024 and show how war harms the corporate labor market in...

We study the effects of North Macedonia's 2017 minimum wage reform - the largest in the country's history - using matched employer-employee administrative data covering the entire range of firms and employees, and a difference-in-differences design based on firms' pre-reform share of minimum...

This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in construction productivity on cross-country income disparity. Using a sample of 168 countries, we estimate the 10:1 spread in construction productivity as a factor of 49-fold in 2017. The construction productivity gap falls by 46 percent...

Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender...

Investment has been low in the last decades (both by firms and by government). This does not only hold for fixed capital including R&D, but also for investment in climate, housing, infrastructure and education. Productivity has been low too and should be stimulated, as is elaborated in the...

The discussion on Artificial Intelligence (AI) often centers around its impact on productivity, but macroeconomic evidence for Europe remains scarce. Using the Acemoglu (2024) approach we simulate the medium-term impact of AI adoption on total factor productivity for 31 European countries. We...

This chapter presents a tractable framework for the study of technology adoption and diffusion in the context of economic development. Firms in countries behind the world technology frontier can rapidly adopt new techniques from the world frontier. Lower absorptive capacity (because of weak...

Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is diffusing rapidly in the workplace, yet aggregate productivity gains remain limited. This paper examines the dual diffusion of AI – through both formal, employer-led and informal, employee-initiated adoption – as potential explanation. Using a representative...

We present the first representative international data on firm-level AI use. We survey almost 6,000 CFOs, CEOs, and executives from stratified firm samples across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. We find four key facts. First, around 70 percent of firms actively use AI, particularly younger,...

We use novel data from a survey of nearly 750 corporate executives to study the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on productivity and the workforce. We document substantial heterogeneity in AI adoption across firms, with more than half having already invested, though many smaller firms are...

This study analyses Portugal's wheat productive capacity, exploring the reasons behind its recent steady decline despite achieving self-sufficiency in the 20th century. Using Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), which proved to be highly effective in the development of forecasting...

We estimate relative wage discrimination for ethnic and migrant groups in New Zealand, using linked employer-employee and firm-level productivity data, and comparing each group's contribution to output with their share of their firm's wage bill. We find that wage discrimination is relatively...

Background: Gold mining is a critical part of the industry of Central Asia, contributing significantly to regional economic growth. However, gold production management faces numerous challenges, including adopting innovative technologies such as AI, using improved logistical equipment, resolving...

We quantify the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on firm productivity through a series of large-scale randomized field experiments involving millions of users and products at a leading cross-border online retail platform. Over six months in 2023-2024, GenAI-based enhancements...

Daron Acemoglu and Pascal Restrepo uncover how automation disproportionately targets tasks that pay workers above-market wages, eroding those rents and amplifying wage losses for affected workers. Using U.S. data from 1980 to 2016, they show that this “rent dissipation” not only reduces wage...

The objective of this study is to conduct an analysis of the efficiency and productivity of a thermal power generation plant in the Indian public sector. This analysis has been carried out using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology, focusing on the period from 2014-15...

We study the short- and medium-term extensive and intensive margins of intangible investments in firm growth processes. The intensive and extensive margins of investment are both highly skewed and differ across sectors. Less productive firms are less likely to invest in intangibles, while...

This paper investigates whether investments in data affect firms’ R&D and whether the two are productivity-enhancing complements. We conceptualise and test whether investments in data reduce market uncertainty, thereby mitigating the inherent uncertainty of R&D and enhancing research and...