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The Impact of ICT Investment on Establishment Productivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Thomas Zwick*
Affiliation:
Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, Germany
*
e-mail: zwick@zew.de

Abstract

This paper finds substantial effects of ICT investments on productivity for a large and representative German establishment panel data set. In contrast to the bulk of the literature also establishments without ICT capital are included and lagged effects of ICT investments are analysed. In addition, a broad range of establishment and employee characteristics are taken account of in order to avoid omitted variable bias. It is shown that taking into account unobserved heterogeneity of the establishments and endogeneity of ICT investments increases the estimated lagged productivity impact of ICT investments.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

I would like to express my gratitude to the Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) for enabling access to the IAB establishment panel. I also thank Andries de Grip, Thomas Hempell, Heinz Hollenstein, Petri Rouvinen, Michela Vecchi, Elke Wolf and the editors of the Review for useful comments.

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