Publications

Explore our research papers, policy briefs, and reports on critical global issues

Filters :

14 publications found

  • On the interaction between monetary policy, corporate balancesheets and structural reforms

    • Growth

    In this paper, we use cross-industry, cross-country panel data to test if, and how monetary policycan affect growth. To do so, we use two alternative approaches. We first focus on the reactivity of real short term interest rates to the business cycle and show that its interaction with industry-level measures of financial constraints correlates positively […]

    Written by

    See publication

  • Climate Change, Directed Innovation, and Energy Transition:The Long-run Consequences of the Shale Gas Revolution

    • Climate

    • Energy

    • Growth

    • Innovation

    We investigate the short- and long-term effects of a shale gas boom in an economy where energy can be produced with coal, natural gas, or clean energy sources. In the short run, cheaper natural gas has counteracting effects on CO2 emissions: on the one hand it allows substitution away from coal which reduces CO2 emissions, […]

    Written by

    See publication

  • The Inverted-U Relationship Between Credit Access and Productivity Growth

    • Growth

    • Innovation

    • Productivity

    We identify two counteracting effects of credit access on productivity growth: on the one hand, better access to credit makes it easier for entrepreneurs to innovate; on the other hand, better credit access allows less efficient incumbent firms to remain longer on the market, thereby discouraging entry of new and potentially more efficient innovators. We […]

    Written by

    See publication

  • Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth

    • AI

    • Growth

    This paper examines the potential impact of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on economic growth. We model A.I. as the latest form of automation, a broader process dating back more than 200 years. Electricity, internal combustion engines, and semiconductors facilitated automation in the last century, but A.I. now seems poised to automate many tasks once thought to […]

    Written by

    See publication

  • Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times

    • Growth

    What is the optimal form of firm organization during “bad times”? We present a model of delegation within the firm to show that the effect is ambiguous. The greater turbulence following macro shocks may benefit decentralized firms because the value of local information increases (the “localist” view). On the other hand, the need to make […]

    Written by

    See publication

  • Artificial Intelligence, Growth and Employment: The Role of Policy

    • AI

    • Automation

    • Employment

    • Growth

    • Policy

    • Publication

    In this survey paper, we argue that the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on growth and employment depend to a large extent on institutions and policies. We develop a two-fold analysis. In a first section, we survey the most recent literature to show that AI can spur growth by replacing labor by capital, […]

    Written by

    Published

    December 2019

    See publication

  • Firm Dynamics and Growth Measurement in France

    • Creative Destruction

    • Firm Dynamics

    • Growth

    • Publication

    In this paper we use the same methodology as Aghion et al. (2017) to compute missing growth estimates from creative destruction in France. We find that from 2004 to 2015, about 0.5 percentage point of real output growth per year is missed by the statistical office, which is about the same as what was found in […]

    Written by

    Published

    August 2018

    See publication

  • Missing Growth from Creative Destruction

    • Creative Destruction

    • Growth

    • Publication

    For exiting products, statistical agencies often impute inflation from surviving products. This understates growth if creatively-destroyed products improve more than surviving ones. If so, then the market share of surviving products should systematically shrink. Using entering and exiting establishments to proxy for creative destruction, we estimate missing growth in US Census data on non-farm businesses […]

    Written by

    Published

    August 2019

    See publication

  • A new dataset to study a century of innovation in Europe and in the US

    • Growth

    • Innovation

    • Patent

    • Publication

    Innovation is an important driver of potential growth but quantitative evidence on the dynamics of innovative activities in the long-run are hardly documented due to the lack of data, especially in Europe. In this paper, we introduce PatentCity, a novel dataset on the location and nature of patentees from the 19th century using information derived from […]

    Written by

    Published

    January 2024

    See publication

  • Patents that Match your Standards: Firm-level Evidence on Competition, Innovation and Growth

    • Competition

    • Growth

    • Innovation

    • Patents

    • Publication

    When a technology becomes the new standard, the firms that are leaders in producingthis technology gain a competitive advantage. Matching the semantic content of patentsto standard documents, we show that firms closer to the new technology standard in-crease their market share and sales. In addition, if they operate in a competitive market,these firms also increase […]

    Written by

    Published

    June 2026

    See publication

  • Good Rents versus Bad Rents: R&D Misallocation and Growth

    • Growth

    • Innovation

    • Working Paper

    Firm price-cost markups may reflect (a) bigger step sizes from qualityinnovations that confer significant knowledge spillovers onto other firms,and/or (b) higher process efficiency than competing firms or other factorswhich bear no obvious knowledge externality. We write down anendogenous growth model with innovation step size and process efficiencyas alternative sources of markup heterogeneity. We then use […]

    Written by

    See publication

  • The Direct and Indirect Effects of Automation on Employment: A Survey of the Recent Literature

    • AI

    • Employment

    • Growth

    • Policy

    • Working Paper

    In this article, we survey the recent literature and discuss two contrasting views on the direct and indirectimpacts of automation on employment. A first view predicts that firms that automation reduceemployment (a negative “direct effect”), even if this may ultimately result in new job creations takingadvantage of the lower equilibrium wage induced by job destructions […]

    Written by

    Published

    2022

  • A Theory of Falling Growth and Rising Rents

    • Growth

    • Innovation

    • Publication

    Exploring strategies to ensure equitable access to quality digital education across socioeconomic divides.

    Written by

    Published

    20 february 2023

    See publication

  • Monetary Policy, Product Market Competition and Growth

    • Growth

    • Publication

    In this paper we argue that monetary easing fosters growth more in more credit-constrained environments, and the more so the higher the degree of product market competition. Indeed, when competition is low, large rents allow firms to stay on the market and reinvest optimally, no matter how funding conditions change with aggregate conditions. To test […]

    Written by

    Philippe Aghion

    See publication