Essays on Productivity and Innovation

Abstract

This dissertation explores themes surrounding digital innovation and its effects on industries and firm- and employee-level productivity. Using novel and often proprietary sources of data, I take an empirical approach to asking how digital technology has transformed entire industries (e.g. medical devices and medical care), as well as how employees interact with tasks (e.g. technology-enabled remote work and telemedical care), with a focus on unpacking mechanisms driving each result. In each of these chapters, I focus on phenomena with large-scale impacts, from the digital transformation of a 150 billion US dollar medical device industry in the US, to increased productivity at the US Patent and Trademark Office that could lead to 1.3 billion US dollar in value as a result of new patent approvals, to potentially saving 70,000 lives a year as a result of telemedical intervention in the intensive care sector in the US