Railroads in Meiji Japan are credited with facilitating factor mobility as well as access to human and financial capital, but the direct impact on firms is unclear. Using prefecture‐level industry data and a difference-indifferences model that exploits the temporal and spatial variation of railroad expansion, I assess the relationship between railways and firm activity across Japan. Results indicate that while rail access corresponds to lower firm numbers, total and average firm capitalization increase after controlling for market size and geography. These latter findings apply particularly to the manufacturing and service sectors, respectively, and coupled with decreased firms activity in areas with longer coastlines and larger populations, are consistent with industrial agglomeration and slower industrial growth in newly integrated markets.

Using the detailed Statistics of US Business and the Annual Input-Output accounts, this paper addresses the employment dynamics of establishments of different sizes, in different sectors, and of different intensity of use of information technology hardware, software and IT-services over the time period 2001 to 2009. Findings include (1): ITusing sectors that are above-average in IT-intensity started out being three times more ITintensive and ended up being more than four-times the IT-intensity as the below-average using sectors. Hence, there is widening dispersion in IT-intensity across sectors in the US economy. (2) IT producers are a small part of the economy, only about 3 % of employment. However, IT-software and services establishments have tended to add jobs on net, particularly at smaller establishments (size 1-99 employees). This suggests that IT again is the hot-bed of entrepreneurship. (3) Small establishments that use IT intensively account for only about 5 % of overall employment. However, net job creation at these small-IT-intensive using establishments accounted for between 13 % and 68 % of the economy-wide net job change from 2001 to 2009. Entrepreneurship in these IT-using services establishments appears to be promoted by the availability of IT-software and ITservices

This paper considers three channels through which globalization of information technology products may affect economic growth: Terms of trade in IT products in international trade, economies of scale in IT production and trade, and variety in IT consumption and trade. The empirical question relevant for policy makers is, what is the relative magnitudes of these channels. To catalyze economic growth and enhance performance, should policymakers promote IT exports to exploit economies of scale in production? Or, should they promote imports and domestic consumption of a variety of IT products to gain from falling IT prices, get more variety, and through these channels support faster TFP? Using a sample of 36 countries for 2000-2007, the findings are: (1) Importers of IT gain relatively more than exporters, on average, from the declining prices of IT coming through international trade. (2) Despite falling IT prices, most exporters enjoy positive economy-wide benefits of trading in IT because of economies of scale in production. (3) The extent of variety of traded IT products is related to the deviation of a country‘s experience from that of the average country in its peer group. Controlling for

Economists and economic historians want to know how much better life is today than in the past. Fifty years ago economic historians found surprisingly small gains from 19th century US railroads, while more recently economists have found relatively large gains from electricity, computers and cell phones. In each case the implicit or explicit assumption is that researchers were measuring the value of a new good to society. In this paper we use the same techniques to find the value to society of making existing goods cheaper. Henry Ford did not invent the car, and the inventors of mechanised cotton spinning in the industrial revolution invented no new product. But both made existing products dramatically cheaper, bringing them into the reach of many more consumers. That in turn has potentially large welfare effects. We find that the consumer surplus of Henry Ford’s production line was around 2 % by 1923, 15 years after Ford began to implement the moving assembly line, while the mechanisation of cotton spinning was worth around 6 % by 1820, 34 years after its initial invention. Both are large: of the same order of magnitude as consumer expenditure on these items, and as large or larger than the value of the internet to consumers. On the social savings measure traditionally used by economic historians, these process innovations were worth 15 % and 18 % respectively, making them more important than railroads. Our results remind us that process innovations can be at least as important for welfare and productivity as the invention of new products.

This document was produced as background for the 2011 International Transport Forum, on


 Julio
 2009
Alfonso
Herranz‐Loncán. Todos
 los
derechos
 reservados. Secciones
 cortas
de este texto
pueden
usarse
 sin
 permiso
 expreso
 siempre
que
 se
 cite
 explícitamente
 el
mismo como fuente.

Abstract not found

R000239536 is gratefully acknowledged.

Abstract not found