gmail: research.dave.byrne

Work in progress

• GenAI at the Crossroads: Light Bulb, Dynamo, or Microscope? (with Martin Baily, Aidan Kane, and Paul Soto)

• Risk in the Electronics Supply Chain from Soup to Nuts Abstract: Fueled by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and rising tension between mainland China and Taiwan, policymakers have moved supply chain risk to the front burner with a particular focus on the electronics sector. To support rigorous discussion of the this issue, we provide annual indicators from 2000 forward for risk of political instability, natural disaster, industrial accident, and transportation in the electronics sector. Broadly, risk increased through roughly 2010 as China rapidly increased its share of global electronics production. Since 2010, risk has either held steady or declined, depending on type. Risk profiles vary substantially across the industries that make up the sector---mineral processing, chip manufacturing, equipment assembly, etc.---and across types of equipment. Locations producing low- to moderate-value products in high volume are characterized by higher supply chain risk. In addition to these supply shocks, demand shocks can play an important role in supply chain disruptions, as illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Nodes and Edges in the Electronics Sector (With Nicole Hoffman) Abstract: We document the pattern of activity (production, bilateral trade, and sales) by country for electronic components and final electronics (computers, communication equipment, and special-purpose electronics) for the 1992-2024 period. We provide quantitative indicators of the complexity of the network and the elasticity of the system with respect to trade policy changes.
• Where's Qualcomm? The Hidden U.S. Semiconductor Industry (with Emily Green)

• The Digital Economy: Three Fundamental Measurement Challenges Presentation Abstract: Previous critical reviews of price statistics have focused on the shortcomings of individual price indexes, including incomplete accounting for substitution among items, confounding of inflation and quality change, among others. \emph{Systemic problems} in the inflation measurement system have been largely ignored, including inconsistency in price measures across products, over time, and among countries. We illustrate these problems using examples from information technology (IT), focusing on macroeconomic analysis. We then identify and discuss three barriers to the correction of these problems in the statistical system: Balkanization, perfectionism, and recency bias.
• Transistors all the way Down: Viability of Direct Volume Measurement (and Price Indexes) for Semiconductors (with Adrian Hamins-Puertolas and Molly Harnish) Abstract: he semiconductor (solid-state electronics) industry is a prime example of global production sharing, of the translation of basic research into productivity, and of the power of a general-purpose technology to boost economic growth. Study of these questions requires measures of industry output and prices that are complete and consistent across time, economies, and products. Such data are not currently available. We solve this problem by measuring volume directly using plant-level capacity, industry utilization, and parameters for the state of technology. Our output and implicit price indexes for microprocessors, memory chips, and other logic for the 1996-2023 period compare favorably to existing indexes deemed to be reliable. However, in some periods, our output and price measures suggest rather different stylized facts for the global industry, including a smaller surge in chip production in the late 1990s and rapid price declines for GPUs in recent years. Slides for presentation at 2024 ASSA meetings.
• Car Phone, Bag Phone, Flip Phone, Brick Phone (with Isabel Leigh)
• COVID-19 and Digital Consumption (with Carol Corrado)

Other Work

• The Digital Economy and Productivity: Overview of the digital economy, its role in aggregate productivity, and measurement challenges that interfere with analysis.
• Is the IT Revolution Over?: Assessment of the prospects---as of 2013---for a revival of rapid productivity growth boosted by IT. (with Dan Sichel and Steve Oliner)
• Does the United States have a Productivity Slowdown or a Measurement Problem?: Assessment of the contribution of measurement problems---those quantifiable as of 2016---to the reported productivity slowdown since the boom that began in the 1990s. Correcting these problems seems unlikely to significantly reduce the slowdown. (with John Fernald and Marshall Reinsdorf)
• IT Services and their Prices: What do they tell us about Productivity and Technology?: Overview of prices of computing & communications equipment and software, best practices for measurement, and implications for productivity and technology. (with Carol Corrado)
• IT Asset Prices: Marshaling Evidence into New Measures: Estimates, sources, and methods for computing & communications equipment and software for 1963-2015.
• Acounting for Innovations in Consumer Digital Services: IT Still Matters: Accounting for consumer access to digital services---both purchased and generated by household IT equipment---shows that IT consumption has accelerated. (with Carol Corrado)

• The Rise of Cloud Computing: Minding your P's, Q's, and K's: Sketches the nature and size of cloud computing and offers guidance on measuring the nominal value and the price of cloud computing investment
• : Prices for Communications Equipment: Rewriting the Record. Sources, methods, and estimates for the full range of communications equipment types. (with Carol Corrado) : Recent trends in communications equipment prices is a short treatment of the same issues.
• Quality-adjusted Price Measurement: A new Approach with Evidence from Semiconductors: An approach to measuring contract chip manufacturing using explicit modeling of the substitution between suppliers. (with Briak Kovak and Ryan Michaels)
• Prices for Data Storage Equipment and the State of IT Innovation: Data storage equipment---often overlooked in discussions of IT---exhibits rapid price declines when measured well.
• Prices and Depreciation in the Market for Tablet Computers: Joint estimation of prices and depreciation. (with Wendy Dunn and Eugenio Pinto)
• : The Increasing Deflationary Influence of Consumer Digital Access Services. Prices for internet, mobile phone, cable TV, and streaming services are 2 percent of U.S. household consumption and their prices are falling much quicker than is widely understood. (with Carol Corrado)
• : The Scope of U.S. "Factoryless Manufacturing". Firms that outsource fabrication but retain control of design are poorly captured in official statistics and are widespread across industries. (with Kim Bayard and Dominic Smith)
• How Fast are Chip Prices Falling?: We show that when performance on benchmark tasks is used to measure chip quality, microprocessor prices continued to fall rapidly through 2013. (with Dan Sichel and Steve Oliner)
• Prices for High-Tech Products, Mismeasurement, and the Pace of Innovation: The wedge between innovation in the IT sector and the rest of the economy is wide, and substantially wider than statistics show. (with Dan Sichel and Steve Oliner)
• Getting Smart about Phones: New Price INdexes and the Allocation of Spending Between Devices and Services Plans in Personal Consumption Expenditures: Demonstrates rapid declines in prices for smartphones result from hedonic quality adjustment and that PCE is missing a noteworthy share of smartphone consumption. (With Ana Aizcorbe and Dan Sichel)
• Domestic Electronics Manufacturing: Medical, Military, and Aerospace Equipment and What We Don't Know about High-Tech Productivity: The footprint of the electronics sector in the U.S. manufacturing sector is almost entirely special-purpose equipment, which have received little attention.