The next working group meeting on Digital Activities will take place on Tuesday, 25th February from 5.30pm to 7pm
Speaker : Mert Demirer - MIT Sloan School of Management
Paper : Firm Productivity and Learning in the Digital Economy: Evidence from Cloud Computing
Abstract : Computing technologies have become critical inputs to production in the modern firm. However, there is little large-scale evidence on how efficiently firms use these technologies. In this paper, we study firm productivity and learning in cloud computing by leveraging CPU utilization data from over one billion virtual machines used by nearly 100,000 firms. We find large and persistent heterogeneity in compute productivity both across and within firms, similar to canonical results in the literature. More productive firms respond better to demand fluctuations, show higher attentiveness to resource utilization, and use a wider variety of specialized machines. Notably, productivity is dynamic as firms learn to be more productive over time. New cloud adopters improve their productivity by 33% in their first year and reach the productivity level of experienced firms within four years. In our counterfactual calculations, we estimate that raising all firms to the 80th percentile of productivity would reduce aggregate electricity usage by 17%.
Relevant information:
- Here the Microsoft Teams link. The session will cover 90 minutes (questions and answers included).
- The working group is part of the activities of the Governance and Regulation Chair at Paris Dauphine-PSL University. The group meets once in two weeks to discuss, share, and present working papers and/or ideas surrounding recent developments in the domain of platform regulation. We have both internal and external presenters to share their work.
- If you would like to present your work or have anyone in mind to present, please send an email to lucas.eustache@dauphine.psl.eu.
