What is the relationship between computer adoption, skill levels, and wages? A recent paper by Paul Beaudry, Mark Doms, and Ethan Lewis, "Endogenous Skill Bias in Technology Adoption: City-Level Evidence from the IT Revolution", examines the complex interaction between these three sets of variables.
The adoption of personal computers by businesses varied greatly across the country from 1981 to 2002; some cities consistently used PCs much more intensively than others. Research by Mark Doms and Ethan Lewis, "Labor Supply and Personal Computer Adoption", examines the endogenous relationship between human capital and personal computer adoption, and uses several sets of instruments to argue that the human capital in a city is highly correlated with personal computer adoption.
Do hours worked rise or fall when techology improves? John Fernald examines this long-debated issue in "Trend Breaks, Long-Run Restrictions, and the Contractionary Effects of Technology Improvements".
"Beggar Thy Neighbor? The In-State versus Out-of-State Impact of State R&D Tax Credits," by Dan Wilson, assesses the effectiveness of state R&D tax credits in stimulating R&D within a state and asks whether such credits impose a negative externality on other states' R&D spending. The findings suggest these credits are effective but impose large externalities, raising doubts about their efficacy from a national policy standpoint.
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