Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers
Creation-Date: 2008-09-03
Revision-Date: 2009-09-29
Number: 08-081/3
Author-Name: Philipp Koellinger
Author-Email: koellinger@ese.eur.nl
Author-Workplace-Name: Erasmus University Rotterdam
Author-Name: Christian Schade
Author-Email: schade@wiwi.hu-berlin.de
Author-Workplace-Name: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Title: Acceleration of Technology Adoption withing Firms
Abstract: This paper studies the diffusion of multiple, related technologies among firms. The results suggest an endogenous acceleration mechanism of technology adoption: The more advanced a firm is in using a particular set of technologies, the more likely it is to adopt additional, related technologies. We show that such a mechanism can occur under fairly general circumstances. If firms are not ex ante identical, the endogenous acceleration mechanism suggests a growing divergence in technological endowment of firms in the early phases after the emergence of a new technological paradigm. The theoretical predictions are tested with a dataset that records the adoption times of various e-business technologies in a large sample of firms from 10 different industry sectors and 25 European countries. The results show that the probability to adopt strictly increases with the number of previously adopted e-business technologies. Evidence for a growing digital divide among the companies in the sample is demonstrated for the period from 1994-2002.
Classification-JEL: O33, O14
Keywords: Technology adoption, technological change, complementarity, hazard rate model, IT
File-Url: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/08081.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 391805 bytes
Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20080081