ICT-specific technological change and productivity growth in the US: 1980-2004

This paper studies the impact of the information and communication technologies (ICT) on U.S. economic growth using a dynamic general equilibrium approach. We use a production function with six di¤erent capital inputs, three of them corresponding to ICT assets and other three to non-ICT assets. We …nd that the technological change embedded in hardware equipment is the main leading nonneutral force of the U.S. productivity growth and accounts for about one quarter of it during the period 1980-2004. As a whole, ICTspeci…c technological change accounts for about 35% of total labor productivity growth. JEL classi…cation: E22, O30, O40. Keywords: New economy, information and communication technologies, speci…c-technological change, neutral-technological change. For very helpful comments, we are grateful to S. Barrios, G. Fernández-de-Córdoba, M. Hidalgo, M. Mas, A. Moro, J.M. O’Kean, J.J. Pérez, and participants in the VI Workshop on International Economics (Málaga, March 2007) and XXXII Simposio de Análisis Económico (Granada, December 2007). We also thank P. Kehoe for suggesting us some extensions in this paper. Financial support from Centro de Estudios Andaluces (projects ECOD 1.07/085 and 1.05/025), Spanish Ministry of Science (project 2006-04803) and Junta de AndalucíaProyecto de Excelencia P07-SEJ-02479 is acknowledged. Corresponding author: José L. Torres, Dpto. de Teoría e Historia Económica, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de El Ejido 29071 Málaga (Spain). e-mail: [email protected]