IT Shields: Technology Adoption and Economic Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

IT Shields: Technology Adoption and Economic Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic
READ MORE...
Volume/Issue: Volume 2020 Issue 208
Publication date: September 2020
ISBN: 9781513557755
$18.00
Add to Cart by clicking price of the language and format you'd like to purchase
Available Languages and Formats
English
Prices in red indicate formats that are not yet available but are forthcoming.
Topics covered in this book

This title contains information about the following subjects. Click on a subject if you would like to see other titles with the same subjects.

Labor , Economics- Macroeconomics , WP , IT adoption , adoption state , IT adopter , adoption measure , IT budget , adoption dummy , adoption pattern , Unemployment rate , COVID-19 , Unemployment , Europe , Global , Technology , Inequality , Skill-Biased Technical Change

Summary

We study the economic effects of information technology (IT) adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on IT adoption covering almost three million establishments in the US, we find that technology adoption can partly shield the economy from the impact of the pandemic. In areas where firms adopted more IT the unemployment rate rose less in response to social distancing. Our estimates imply that if the pandemic had hit the world 5 years ago, the resulting unemployment rate would have been 2 percentage points higher during April and May 2020 (16% vs. 14%), due to the lower availability of IT. Local IT adop-tion mitigates the labor market consequences of the pandemic for all individuals, regardless of gender and race, except those with the lowest level of educational attainment.