Podcasts and Other Media

General-purpose technologies (GPT) have the potential to transform how we work, to change the skills we need and to drive productivity growth. It is therefore important to understand the conditions that lead to the successful adoption of GPT.

In this episode, hear from Kim Nguyen on how she, and co-author Jonathan Hambur, used a novel database to assess the adoption of cloud computing and artificial intelligence/machine learning. They found the COVID-19 pandemic led to a short-lived surge in adoption of cloud computing technologies. They also found that profitable adoption is more likely to occur in firms where the Board has members with relevant technological backgrounds, and that firms adopting GPT are more likely to seek staff with related skills. These findings highlight the importance of workers’ and managers’ skills in technology adoption, and the impact this can have on productivity growth.

Earnings call transcripts are a rich and timely source of information about firms’ own business conditions, as well as economic and financial conditions more broadly. The sentiment and language used during these calls provide additional context, nuance and insights that are valuable for economists trying to understand how firms make choices and how those choices affect prices.

In this episode, learn about the work of Callan Windsor and Max Zang to process and analyse over 700,000 paragraphs of text extracted from around 5,500 transcripts collected since the start of 2007 using a state-of-the-art large language model. The purpose of this was to better understand firms’ price-setting behaviour.

Data provide one window into what’s happening in the economy. To really understand what’s going on and why, we also need to engage with the people who operate within the economy. Enter the liaison program – a formal program of economic intelligence gathering established in 2001. Through the program our economists meet frequently with businesses, industry bodies, government agencies and community organisations. This gives us a near real time read on the economy that complements published data and economic models in informing our assessment of economic conditions.

In this episode, learn about the history of the program, why we place so much importance on talking to the community in this way and how it has supported our decision-making over the last two decades.