Computers, Obsolescence, and Productivity

Computers, Obsolescence, and Productivity

What effect have computers had on U.S. productivity growth? This paper shows that increased productivity in the computer-producing sector and the effect of investment in computers on the productivity of those who use them together account for the recent acceleration in U.S. labor productivity. In calculating the computer-usage effect, standard NIPA measures of the computer capital stock are ina...

Measuring Productivity on High Performance Computers

In the high performance computing domain, the speed of execution of a program has typically been the primary performance metric. But productivity is also of concern to high performance computing developers. In this paper we will discuss the problems of defining and measuring productivity for these machines and we develop a model of productivity that includes both a performance component and a c...

Optimal obsolescence

Quality, Obsolescence and Unsustainable Innovation

One of the negative side effects of the consumer society and the increasing number of consumer goods available to the average household is the intransparency of product quality, especially product lifetime. There are many examples on failing products and premature obsolescence. Often this phenomenon is related to companies’ profit maximization strategies (planned obsolescence) and consumer prot...

Aging, Obsolescence and Organizational Innovation

• • The order of authorship on this paper is random and contributions were equal. We would like to thank Ron Burt, Jim March and Mike Tushman for many helpful suggestions. Olav Sorenson provided particularly extensive comments on this paper. We would like to acknowledge the financial support of the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business and a grant from the Kauffman Center for Entre...