IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8525.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information, Decisions, and Productivity: On-Board Computers and Capacity Utilization in Trucking

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas N. Hubbard

Abstract

Productivity reflects not only how efficiently inputs are transformed into outputs, but also how well information is brought to bear on resource allocation decisions. This paper examines this empirically by looking at how on-board computer (OBC) adoption has affected capacity utilization in the trucking industry. Estimates using 1997 data indicate that capacity utilization has increased by an average of 13% among trucks for which advanced OBCs have been adopted. The average benefits to adopters are higher in 1997 than 1992, suggesting lags to the returns to adoption, and are highly skewed across hauls. The 1997 estimates imply that OBC-enabled improvements in communications and resource allocation decisions have led to a 3% increase in capacity utilization in the industry, which translates to billions of dollars of annual benefits. The commercialization of other wireless networking applications has the potential to generate analogous benefits in other contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas N. Hubbard, 2001. "Information, Decisions, and Productivity: On-Board Computers and Capacity Utilization in Trucking," NBER Working Papers 8525, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8525
    Note: IO PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8525.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Gordon, 2000. "Does the "New Economy" Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 49-74, Fall.
    2. Hubbard, Thomas N, 2001. "Contractual Form and Market Thickness in Trucking," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 369-386, Summer.
    3. Thomas N. Hubbard, 2000. "The Demand for Monitoring Technologies: The Case of Trucking," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 533-560.
    4. Lichtenberg, F.R. & Lehr, B., 1996. "Computer Use and Productivity Growth in federal Government Agencies," Papers 96-10, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
    5. Susan Athey & Scott Stern, 2002. "The Impact of Information Technology on Emergency Health Care Outcomes," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(3), pages 399-432, Autumn.
    6. George P. Baker & Thomas N. Hubbard, 2000. "Contractibility and Asset Ownership: On-Board Computers and Governance in U.S. Trucking," NBER Working Papers 7634, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2000. "Beyond Computation: Information Technology, Organizational Transformation and Business Performance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 23-48, Fall.
    8. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin Hitt, 1996. "Paradox Lost? Firm-Level Evidence on the Returns to Information Systems Spending," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 541-558, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:dgr:rugggd:200471 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Ark, Bart van, 2004. "Productivity and employment growth: an empirical review of long and medium run evidence : background working paper for the world employment report 2004," GGDC Research Memorandum 200471, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen.
    3. Matthew Calver & Fanny McKellips, 2016. "Productivity Trends in the Canadian Transport Sector: An Overview," CSLS Research Reports 2016-04, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    4. Edward N. Wolff, 2002. "Productivity, computerization, and skill change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 87(Q3), pages 63-87.
    5. Nordås, Hildegunn Kyvik, 2004. "Vertical specialization and the quality of infrastructure," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2003-04, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas N. Hubbard, 2003. "Information, Decisions, and Productivity: On-Board Computers and Capacity Utilization in Trucking," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1328-1353, September.
    2. Greenstein, Shane, 2010. "Innovative Conduct in Computing and Internet Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 477-537, Elsevier.
    3. Kiley, Michael T., 2001. "Computers and growth with frictions: aggregate and disaggregate evidence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 171-215, December.
    4. J. Bradford DeLong, 2002. "Do We Have a "New" Macroeconomy?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 2, pages 163-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Sadaf Bashir & Bert Sadowski, 2014. "General Purpose Technologies: A Survey, a Critique and Future Research Directions," Working Papers 14-02, Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies, revised Feb 2014.
    6. Hemant K. Bhargava & Abhay Nath Mishra, 2014. "Electronic Medical Records and Physician Productivity: Evidence from Panel Data Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(10), pages 2543-2562, October.
    7. Luis Garicano & Luis Rayo, 2016. "Why Organizations Fail: Models and Cases," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 137-192, March.
    8. Pierre-Alain Muet, 2006. "Impacts économiques de la révolution numérique," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 57(3), pages 347-375.
    9. Liao, Hailin & Wang, Bin & Li, Baibing & Weyman-Jones, Tom, 2016. "ICT as a general-purpose technology: The productivity of ICT in the United States revisited," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 10-25.
    10. Benito Arruñada & Manuel González-Díaz & Alberto Fernández, 2004. "Determinants of organizational form: transaction costs and institutions in the European trucking industry," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(6), pages 867-882, December.
    11. Gu, Wulong Gera, Surendra, 2004. "The Effect of Organizational Innovation and Information Technology on Firm Performance," The Canadian Economy in Transition 2004007e, Statistics Canada, Economic Analysis Division.
    12. Gianfranco E. Atzeni & OA Carboni, 2004. "ICT productivity and firm propensity to innovative investment: learning effect evidence from italian micro data," Working Paper CRENoS 200414, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    13. Charlie Karlsson & Gunther Maier & Michaela Trippl & Iulia Siedschlag & Gavin Murphy, 2010. "ICT and Regional Economic Dynamics: A Literature Review," JRC Research Reports JRC59920, Joint Research Centre.
    14. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2003. "Computing Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 793-808, November.
    15. Concetta Castiglione, 2012. "Technical efficiency and ICT investment in Italian manufacturing firms," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(14), pages 1749-1763, May.
    16. Neeraj Mittal & Barrie R. Nault, 2009. "Research Note ---Investments in Information Technology: Indirect Effects and Information Technology Intensity," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 140-154, March.
    17. Stefan Schweikl & Robert Obermaier, 2020. "Lessons from three decades of IT productivity research: towards a better understanding of IT-induced productivity effects," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 461-507, November.
    18. Federico Biagi, 2013. "ICT and Productivity: A Review of the Literature," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2013-09, Joint Research Centre.
    19. Ohnemus, Jörg, 2007. "Does IT Outsourcing Increase Firm Success? An Empirical Assessment using Firm-Level Data," ZEW Discussion Papers 07-087, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    20. Elizabeth Mack & Alessandra Faggian, 2013. "Productivity and Broadband," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 36(3), pages 392-423, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8525. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.