Data from Orbis helps the OECD link digital adoption with higher firm-level productivity

The OECD working paper Digitalisation and productivity: In search of the holy grail – Firm-level empirical evidence from EU countries uses data from Orbis to identify firm-level productivity and other company characteristics.

According to the report:

This paper assesses how the adoption of a range of digital technologies affects firm productivity. It combines cross-country firm-level data on productivity and industry-level data on digital technology adoption in an empirical framework that accounts for firm heterogeneity. 

The results provide robust evidence that digital adoption in an industry is associated to productivity gains at the firm level. Effects are relatively stronger in manufacturing and routine-intensive activities. They also tend to be stronger for more productive firms and weaker in presence of skill shortages, which may relate to the complementarities between digital technologies and other forms of capital (e.g. skills, organisation, or intangibles).

These results hold for a range of different technologies (high-speed broadband access, simple and complex cloud computing, CRM and ERP software).

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