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Big data and firm-level productivity – A cross-country comparison

Raphaela Andres et al.

Information Economics and Policy2025https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2025.101147article
AJG 2ABDC A
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0.37

Abstract

Until today, the question of how digitalisation and, in particular, individual digital technologies affect productivity is still the subject of controversial debate. Using administrative firm-level data provided by the Dutch and the German statistical offices, we investigate the economic importance of data, in particular, the relation between the application of big data analytics (BDA) and labour productivity (LP) at the firm level. We find that a simple binary measure indicating the mere usage of BDA fails to capture the association between BDA and LP. In contrast, measures of BDA diversity, defined as conducting BDA across multiple data sources, clearly show a positive and statistically significant relationship between BDA and LP, even after controlling for a firm's general digitalisation level. Hence, our results suggest that one mechanism through which firms conducting BDA may achieve greater productivity gains is by incorporating data from multiple domains. • Relation between big data analytics and labour productivity not uniformly distributed. • Administrative firm-level data as a tool to detect effect heterogeneity. • Results depend on firm size, timing, and the diversity of data being analysed. • The more data sources are analysed, the stronger the measured relationship. • Digitalisation-level of firms is highly correlated with their labour productivity.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2025.101147

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@article{raphaela2025,
  title        = {{Big data and firm-level productivity – A cross-country comparison}},
  author       = {Raphaela Andres et al.},
  journal      = {Information Economics and Policy},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2025.101147},
}

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

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