Inter-Industry IT Spillovers After the Dot-Com Bust

This paper uses a novel source of fine-grained data on IT labor mobility to test the hypothesis that patterns of productivity growth observed after the dot-com bust can be partially explained by spillovers of e-commerce know-how from IT industries to other industries. The analysis treats the timing and geographic concentration of dot-com layoffs as a source of exogenous variation in the effects of the bust on different IT labor markets. IT-enabled productivity growth from 2001 onwards was faster for IT-using firms that experienced large changes in the skill content of the IT labor pool as a result of the dot-com bust. The evidence suggests that some of the social returns from dot-com IT investments were captured by IT-using industries in the same regions after the bust. Implications for the current wave of investment in data analytics and future productivity growth patterns are discussed

Private Equity, Technological Investment, and Labor Outcomes

This paper uses novel data on the employment histories of a large fraction of the US workforce to present empirical evidence that corporate technological investment has a significant impact on workers’ subsequent labor market outcomes. Exploiting leveraged buyouts as shocks to firms’ production technologies, we find that employees retained after a private equity acquisition experienced increased long run employment tenures, reductions in short run unemployment durations, and higher rates of within-occupation mobility. The evidence supports the view that private equity investment, by upgrading the technology of the firm, imparts valuable and transferable human capital to retained workers. The effects are especially pronounced for workers in occupations complementary to IT-enabled work practices, and for those who are employed at the acquired firm for longer durations before exit. The findings suggest that employers’ investments in information technology are a critical determinant of human capital stock and subsequent labor outcomes for workers

Now I.T.’s “Personal”: Offshoring and the Shifting Skill Composition of the US Information Technology Workforce

We combine new offshoring and IT workforce micro-data to investigate how an increase in the offshore supply of IT workers has affected the composition of the US IT workforce. We find that at firms with offshore captive IT centers, the relative demand for onshore IT workers in occupations involving tasks that can be traded over computer networks, such as those requiring little personal communication or hands-on interaction with US-based objects, fell by about 8% over the last decade. By comparison, relative demand for workers in those occupations rose by about 3% in firms that were not offshoring. Our second finding is that hourly IT workers are more likely than full-time workers to be employed in occupations requiring tradable tasks, and that the relative demand for hourly IT workers is about 2-3% lower in offshoring firms. We discuss the implications of our findings for IT workers, policy makers, educators, and managers

Now IT\u27s Personal: Offshoring and the Shifting Skill Composition of the U.S. Information Technology Workforce

We combine new information technology (IT) offshoring and IT workforce microdata to investigate how the use of IT offshore captive centers is affecting the skill composition of the U.S. onshore IT workforce. The analysis is based on the theory that occupations involving tasks that are “tradable,” such as tasks that require little personal communication or hands-on interaction with U.S.-based objects, are vulnerable to being moved offshore. Consistent with this theory, we find that firms that have offshore IT captive centers have 8% less of their onshore IT workforce involved in tradable occupations; those without offshore captive centers have increased the proportion of onshore employment in these same occupations by 3%. In addition, we find that hourly IT workers (e.g., IT contractors) are disproportionately employed in tradable jobs, and their onshore employment is 2%–3% lower in firms with offshore captive centers. These findings persist after considering different measures of employment composition, including controls for human capital, firm performance, domestic outsourcing, and whether firms choose to build or buy software. Instrumental variables and corroborating regressions suggest that our estimates are conservative—the magnitude of the effect generally rises after accounting for reverse causality and measurement error

JOB HOPPING, KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS, AND REGIONAL RETURNS TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS

We show that substantial regional differences in returns to information technology (IT) investments by US firms are attributable in part to knowledge spillovers generated by the movements of IT workers among firms. We use a newly developed source of employee micro-data with employer identifiers and location information to model IT workers’ mobility patterns. Access to an external IT pool one standard deviation larger than the mean is associated with a 20% increase in the output elasticity of own IT investment. We discuss implications for managers and for policy makers

The Price and Quantity of IT-Related Intangible Capital

The new business practices and information structures associated with information technology (IT) account for a significant fraction of the market value of modern firms. We use a new IT data series along with Hall’s Quantity Revelation Theorem to measure the amount of IT-related intangible capital (ITIC) in US firms. We find that the prices of ITIC have fluctuated due to dot-com boom and bust valuations. However, with the exception of a brief slowdown in 2001, ITIC quantities have been steadily increasing through 2005. In the average firm in 2005, IT-related intangible capital was about one quarter of the value of physical capital. We also estimate that IT-related intangible capital depreciates at a rate of about 6-8% a year, which is closer to the estimated depreciation rate for physical capital than for R&D capital. Implications for managers and policy makers are discussed

The Extroverted Firm: How External Information Practices Affect Innovation and Productivity

We gather detailed data on organizational practices and information technology (IT) use at 253 firms to examine the hypothesis that external focus—the ability of a firm to detect and therefore respond to changes in its external operating environment—increases returns to IT, especially when combined with decentralized decision making. First, using survey-based measures, we find that external focus is correlated with both organizational decentralization, and IT investment. Second, we find that a cluster of practices including external focus, decentralization, and IT is associated with improved product innovation capabilities. Third, we develop and test a three-way complementarities model that indicates that the combination of external focus, decentralization, and IT is associated with significantly higher productivity in our sample. We also introduce a new set of instrumental variables representing barriers to IT-related organizational change and find that our results are robust when we account for the potential endogeneity of organizational investments. Our results may help explain why firms that operate in information-rich environments such as high-technology clusters or areas with high worker mobility have experienced especially high returns to IT investment and suggest a set of practices that some managers may be able to use to increase their returns from IT investments.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Digital BusinessNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant IRI-9733877

Facial feature tracking using deformable templates

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-66).by Prasanna Balkrishna Tambe.M.Eng

Private equity and workers’ career paths: the role of technological change

We analyze a new dataset on workers’ career paths to examine whether private equity (PE) investments can have positive spillover effects on workers. We study leveraged buyouts in the context of recent information technology (IT) diffusion, and find evidence supporting the argument that many employees of companies acquired by PE investors gain transferable, IT-complementary human capital. Our estimates indicate that these workers experience increases in both long-run employability and wages relative to what they would have realized in the absence of PE investment. The findings underscore PE’s role in mitigating the effects of workforce skill obsolescence resulting from technological change

Sensory Communication

Contains table of contents for Section 2, an introduction and reports on twelve research projects.National Institutes of Health Grant R01 DC00117National Institutes of Health Grant R01 DC02032National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Grant 2 R01 DC00126National Institutes of Health Grant 2 R01 DC00270National Institutes of Health Contract N01 DC-5-2107National Institutes of Health Grant 2 R01 DC00100U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N61339-96-K-0002U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N61339-96-K-0003U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-97-1-0635U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-97-1-0655U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Subcontract 40167U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-96-1-0379U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research Grant F49620-96-1-0202National Institutes of Health Grant RO1 NS33778Massachusetts General Hospital, Center for Innovative Minimally Invasive Therapy Research Fellowship Gran