Seminar
Research seminar: The Digital Economy, Welfare and Productivity Growth
- Speaker
- Kevin Fox, UNSW
- Date
- 13 May 2019
- When
- 09:30 - 11:15
- Where
- Auditoriet, SSB, Akersveien 26
Content
Kevin Fox, UNSW: https://www.business.unsw.edu.au/our-people/kevinfox
The Digital Economy, Welfare and Productivity Growth
Digital technologies are dramatically changing work, consumption and leisure, yet this is not appropriately reflected in official statistics (IMF 2018, “Measuring the Digital Economy”, Staff Report, February). This talk will discuss innovative methods to understand the impact of the Digital Economy on welfare, economic growth and productivity to better inform policy. Recent theoretical developments and new innovative methods for valuing free digital products using massive online experiments will be reviewed. The use of such methods for measuring missing prices of regular market goods will also be considered, with reference to replacement sampling with quality change. There will be an emphasis on the potential of harnessing the reach of the digital economy to improve core measures of economic performance.
Background Papers:
Brynjolfsson, E., A. Collis, W.E. Diewert, F. Eggers and K.J. Fox (2019), “GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy”, NBER Working Paper 25695.
Diewert, W.E., K.J. Fox and P. Schreyer (2018), “The Digital Economy, New Products and Consumer Welfare”, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Paper 2018-16, London, UK.
Diewert, W.E., K.J. Fox and P. Schreyer (2019), “Experimental Economics and the New Goods Problem”, Discussion Paper 19-03, Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.
Practical information