Questions tagged [technology]
The technology tag has no usage guidance.
57
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How would you measure automation or technological development?
Hello dear Economists,
I am a Political Science Masters student and now I have this paper due 10 days. It is only a paper so I should not model something too complex and also I obviously lack the ...
3
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0
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Neoclassical Growth Model with Technology Investment
I am reading Parente & Prescott 1994 JPE. This is just a typical neoclassical model with the extension of a global technology diffusion function and firm investment in technology.
Firms have ...
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Testing method for the performance of R&D support program
Suppose that Government aims to initiate R&D support program to firms
The objective of the support program is to rise R&D expenditures and productivity.
I have the following data variables:
Q: ...
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1
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25
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Can technological investments and advancements be used as monetary policy tool to fight high inflation (or its prospects)?
As of today (2021.12) inflation figures are high (the prospects are under discussions but risks of high inflation can be projected to the future as well) and monetary tightening is in the cards. That ...
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114
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Why are production functions linear in technology?
Economists often assume a production function of the form $ Y = A f(K, L) $, where $Y$ is output, $K$ is capital, $L$ is labour and $A$ is technology. This form of production function can describe ...
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Characterizing goods by R&D costs
Is there a name for distinguishing manufactured goods requiring little/no R&D and ones requiring high/sustained R&D costs? Do these two types of manufactured goods have a name in economics? ...
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35
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Basic question i guess
I'm not in economics, I'm actually studying sociology and I'm doing a subject about labor economics. I'm reading an article that talks about automation and says "The employment impact of ...
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Is there contradiction between automation created resilience and the full employment (with high wages)?
From the one side - full employment with the high wages (but still under the level of creating inflation threat) is nice thing and politicians and central banks are highly motivated to achieve this.
...
3
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3
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220
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Increasing returns, implications?
If a firm has increasing returns to scale (i.e., doubling inputs more than doubles output) would that firm logically end up being the sole firm in its sector in the long run?
If not, what is the ...
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49
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Can demand side restrictions explain the productivity paradox (Solow paradox)?
Productivity paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox is the name for the slow productivity growth (i.e. slow GDP growth) of the developed economies despite the robotics, AI, ...
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40
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How much is currently invested in artificial general intelligence research and development?
Glossary: Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the name given to an upcoming technology that would be able to solve all sorts of problems, like a human, and unlike more specialized existing ...
3
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Would directing more money to science and research and development be an effective response to recessions?
Typical responses to recessions is to follow Keynesian economics and support demand. Would directing money towards science and research and development be a better long term solution to recessions ...
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57
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What is technology in the Ricardo model?
I've been reading about the Ricardo and Heckscher-Ohlin models. I'm having trouble following what makes a worker in the former able to produce more or less of a given good.
So e.g. suppose a US worker ...
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2
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187
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Why labor-augmenting technological progress increases employment and wages?
My textbook says that advances in technology typically raise the marginal product of labor and shift the labor demand curve to the right and calls it labor-augmenting technological advances. The book ...
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4
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245
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Why do we spread knowledge across nations?
We have access to lots of knowledge on paper sharing platforms, open course platforms, open-source platforms and question asking platforms and etc, and Tesla opened all its electric car patents in ...
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Define structural unemployment
I am a bit confused regarding the actual definition of structural unemployment. Some places say that it is the permanent decline of a particular industry, leading to workers being unemployed as they ...
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Why do companies launch products at much higher prices, only to reduce the price drastically after a few months?
I see this to be a prevalent trend - companies too often launch products at much higher prices than they know is gonna lead to good sales numbers, only to reduce the price drastically after a few ...
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How do people check or trust that central bank is not cheating? [closed]
How people can be sure that somebody, cooperating with central bank (or working in it), is not creating money in digital or paper form for themself, so that nobody else notices it?
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How do tech giants manage turnover costs?
Lately I was struck by different studies concluding median job tenure at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple is 1 to 2 years, very low compared to the Bureau of labor statistics which is a ...
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Technological unemployment
I am doing a project on technological change in the job market, that is the substitution of routine occupations and increasing demand for high-skilled jobs.
I have done some research on this and now I ...
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Understanding what's in the frequently reported and discussed high demand in IT specialists in Germany - is the IT Fachkräftemangel real?
So far, I can observe the following contradictory evidences what I perceive from the media.
Statement group #1. In the press, there are repeated reports from different sources about missing ...
3
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3
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514
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Cobb-Douglas production function, given $w$ get $r$ regardless of input levels. Why?
There is a market economy with technology given by:
$$Y = K^\alpha L^{1-\alpha} \tag{1}$$
Firms behave competitively and input prices are:
$$r = \alpha K^{\alpha-1}L^{1-\alpha} = \alpha(\frac{L}{K})...
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Factor-augmenting technologies (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2018c)
In that paper, they consider the following production function:
$Y = F(A_KK,A_LL)$.
Where:
K denotes capital, L is labor, and $A_K$ and $A_L$ denote capital-augmenting
and labor-augmenting ...
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How is labor demand measured?
For instance, in the introduction of this paper (first paragraph), talking about Figure 1, they say that labor demand is measured as the real wage bill normalized by population.
Is it common to ...
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Can one single payment contain multiple Merchant Category Codes (MCC)? [closed]
Some payment cards can be limited for certain purposes only (e.g. for paying only for food, or only for car fuel). When you try to pay for a different purpose, the system rejects the payment.
I ...
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Understanding Boserup's theories on food and overpopulation
From what I understand about Boserup's theories, she claims that when populations grow and near the carrying capacity of whatever habitat they live in, businesses will have incentive to invest in new ...
2
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Research community around logistics micro-economic topics?
Is there the equivalent of a Rand Journal of Economics for the topic of logistics, focusing on the micro-economics of productivity gains via automation or disruptive technologies.
There is the ...
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3
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Claiming that food delivery apps are purely rent extraction
I engaged in an argument with a friend about whether takeaway food ordering apps had any 'value'. I tried to persuade him that they were rent extraction enterprises but he wasn't convinced. So I want ...
2
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Reference Request: Primer on Relationship Economic Growth and Science / Technology
I'm in the early stages of planning a research agenda in this area, which means studying the current literature with an eye for further research opportunities.
The Economics of Science and ...
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2
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119
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Productivity and wages in a task-based model
In a task-based model like the one developed in Acemoglu&Autor 2011 with two types of worker, can the low type have a higher wage with respect to the high type?
More specifically: if the ...
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2
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How technology will help economists to do better predictions?
Would technologies as AI, BI and Big Data help the economists to make better predictions and test models to solve problems like "What level of fiscal stimulus is better for a especific country?"
Is ...
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Why Is the West providing technology to India? [closed]
Previously, we have seen that Europeans and Americans provided various technologies (high-speed rail[1], aerospace[2][3], microprocessor[4], etc.) to China to earn instantaneous money. Later what ...
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What does it mean for a technology to have a $|\rho|<1$?
Nowadays, when trying to model (log)technology $a_t$, I've seen many times the following: $a_t = \rho a_{t-1}+\epsilon$, where epsilon is given a certain probability distribution. What does it mean ...
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2
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Proxies for technological change in an economy?
I am writing a paper on the application of Value-Added TFP to measurement of technological change. Just thinking of throwing in a few variables into my regression. I have ICT capital share (as seen in ...
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Labour Saving vs. Labour Augmenting - what is the difference?
It seems reasonable to say that technology generally increases output per unit of labour. Therefore in any factory which has installed new technology one can reasonably expect that for the same ...
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Energy saving technology and energy service price
I want to assess the effects of energy saving technologies on output growth using time series data. My work would benefit from time series data on patents for energy saving innovations, but this is ...
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Which way is the pendulum swinging with regards to "Access to Capital"
The premise is said best by the economist George Magnus in 2015:
"Advances in technological productivity gains are benefiting a limited number of people. The principal rewards of modern technology ...
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259
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Help with this microeconomics exercise
The question:
A price-taking farmer produces a crop with labor L as the only input.
His production function is:$$F(L) = 10L^{1/2} − 2L$$
He has 4 units of labor
in his family and he cannot hire ...
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2
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259
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How exactly can blockchain technology be used to make a supply chain more efficient?
I am a software developer, and have been studying Bitcoin, Ethereum and blockchain technology over the last 8 months or so. I have read a lot on the Internet about how blockchain technology will ...
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1
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Disruptions in Server / Data Center Market
With the advent of cloud computing, data storage and scaling has become extremely cheap when compared to the strictly physical server alternative (which require a dedicated facility and substantial ...
4
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340
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Difference between Value-Added TFP and Gross-Output TFP?
I am working with EU-KLEMS data, and I am using TFP growth as a proxy for technological change. However, there are 2 variables for TFP - TFP based on Gross Output and TFP based on Value Added.
I ...
2
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1
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Question about skill-biased technical change, Acemoglu
I am writing about skill-biased technical change, and in particular the 2001 Acemoglu (http://economics.mit.edu/files/283) paper on the topic, in which there is a part I am very stuck on.
In the ...
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Is Artificial Intelligence a completely new (and underestimated) production factor?
Accenture research defines Artificial Intelligence as completely new production factor along labour and capital. Is such notion acceptable by economists?
As far as I understand then every asset of AI ...
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Is there proof that today more than 50% of the lowest income society lives worse than 50 years ago
The Economist on 12.11.2016 number (first number after getting US election results) wrote: "In real terms median male earnings are still lower than they were in the 1970s. In the past 50 years, ...
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Factoring Technology into Economics models
There has been tremendous improvement in technologies in recent years. My question is: have economists been able to properly evaluate and factor the values of recent innovations in the technology ...
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Are there big waves of entrepreneurship over time?
In some models there are times when there are many entrepreneurs, and others when there are not. Is this a stylized fact of some kind? Are there any statistics about how entrepreneurial a particular ...
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Why do developing countries adopt 21st century technology, but stay behind in output per capita?
The economic growth rate of Latin America has been about 3% per year for decades; but if you have ever visited, many of the natives have: internet, smartphones, tomography, hybrid cars, etc.
Why don'...
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Understanding Tertiarization of the Economy
Trying to understand some of the core mechanics of tertiarization in developed economies.
According to the WorldBank,
"As incomes continue to rise, people’s needs become less “material”
and they ...
4
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2
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550
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Is information technology going to turn most "common goods" into private goods?
Common goods, (not public) are so because they are non-excludable and rival. Often this reflects the impracticality of excluding some users, rather than an absolute impossibility. For example, a park ...
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Examples of technical progress
I'm wondering if anyone can give me some intuition about technical progress. I can buy the idea that factors improve in quality over time. So 5 workers and/or 5 machines in 1990 can produce more than ...