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Accounting for Innovations in Consumer Digital Services: IT Still Matters

In: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century

Author

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  • David Byrne
  • Carol Corrado
Abstract
This paper develops a framework for measuring digital services in the face of ongoing innovations in the delivery of content to consumers. We capture what Brynjolfsson and Saunders (2009) call \"free goods\" as the capital services generated by connected consumers' stocks of IT digital goods; this service flow augments the existing measure of personal consumption in GDP. Its value is determined by the intensity with which households use their IT capital to consume content delivered over networks, and its volume depends on the quality of the IT capital. Consumers pay for delivery services, however, and the complementarity between device use and network use enables us to develop a quality-adjusted price measure for the access services already included in GDP. Our new estimates imply that accounting for innovations in consumer content delivery matters: The innovations boost consumer surplus by nearly $1,800 (2017 dollars) per connected user per year for the full period of this study (1987 to 2017) and contribute more than 1/2 percentage point to US real GDP growth during the last ten. All told, our more complete accounting of innovations is (conservatively) estimated to have moderated the post-2007 GDP growth slowdown by nearly .3 percentage points per year.
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Suggested Citation

  • David Byrne & Carol Corrado, 2020. "Accounting for Innovations in Consumer Digital Services: IT Still Matters," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 471-517, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:13898
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brynjolfsson, Erik, 2013. "Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology Is Reshaping the Economy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262518611, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Bridgman, Benjamin & Highfill, Tina & Samuels, Jon, 2024. "Introducing consumer durable digital services into the BEA digital economy satellite account," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1).
    2. Alejandra Bellatin & Stephanie Houle, 2021. "Overlooking the online world: Does mismeasurement of the digital economy explain the productivity slowdown?," Staff Analytical Notes 2021-10, Bank of Canada.
    3. Byrne, David M. & Corrado, Carol A., 2020. "The increasing deflationary influence of consumer digital access services," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    4. David Byrne & Carol Corrado & Daniel Sichel, 2020. "The Rise of Cloud Computing: Minding Your Ps, Qs and Ks," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 519-551, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Nicholas Crafts, 2017. "Is Slow Economic Growth the ‘New Normal’ for Europe?," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 45(3), pages 283-297, September.
    6. Anderton, Robert & Jarvis, Valerie & Labhard, Vincent & Morgan, Julian & Petroulakis, Filippos & Vivian, Lara, 2020. "Virtually everywhere? Digitalisation and the euro area and EU economies," Occasional Paper Series 244, European Central Bank.
    7. Shane Greenstein, 2020. "Digital Infrastructure," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 409-447, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Reitze Gouma & Robert Inklaar, 2023. "Capital Measurement and Productivity Growth Across International Databases," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 44, pages 67-88, Fall.
    9. Murciano-Goroff, Raviv & Zhuo, Ran & Greenstein, Shane, 2021. "Hidden software and veiled value creation: Illustrations from server software usage," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    10. Missaka Warusawitharana & Francesca Zucchi, 2022. "The Monetization of Innovation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-084, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Shane Greenstein, 2020. "The Basic Economics of Internet Infrastructure," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 192-214, Spring.
    12. Jerome H. Powell, 2019. "Data-Dependent Monetary Policy in an Evolving Economy : A speech at \"Trucks and Terabytes: Integrating the 'Old' and 'New' Economies\" 61st Annual Meeting of the National Association for Bu," Speech 1093, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Nicolas Petit & David J Teece, 2021. "Innovating Big Tech firms and competition policy: favoring dynamic over static competition [Patterns of industrial innovation]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(5), pages 1168-1198.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
    • L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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