This article identifies firm-level factor-augmenting productivity for capital, labor, and materials using Chinese manufacturing data from 1998 to 2008, a period of state-owned enterprise reform. We develop a novel method to estimate the parameters of a CES production function and recover the three types of factor-augmenting productivity. Results suggest technological change is strongly biased: labor-augmenting productivity grew 12% annually, capital-augmenting 5%, and material-augmenting 1.4%. Factor-augmenting productivity growth varies by sector and ownership. Productivity growth was driven primarily by incumbents, whereas entrants improved capital efficiency and exiters enhanced labor efficiency. We explain factor cost-share shifts through productivity gaps and relative input prices.

This paper studies how artificial intelligence (AI) adoption affects firm-level productivity in South Korea. Using a 2017–2023 panel covering all major market sectors, we combine direct survey measures of AI adoption with a structural model of endogenous productivity to address selection into adoption. We find AI adoption raises revenue-based productivity by about 5% on average, with substantial heterogeneity by time since adoption that is consistent with a delayed J-curve, by sector with the largest gains in ICT and short-run losses in manufacturing, and by application area with gains concentrated in product/service development and sales and marketing rather than production processes. Using the estimates, we also examine how AI adoption relates to market power.

This paper examines how ownership transformation during China’s state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform affected the direction of firm-level technological change. Using Chinese manufacturing data from 1998–2008, I estimate a nested CES production function with factor-augmenting productivities and embed privatization directly into the law of motion for each productivity to address endogenous ownership change. I also relax perfect-competition assumptions in labor markets by allowing ownership-specific rent sharing, which separates true labor-augmenting technological change from wage markdowns. Using the estimates, we quantify how privatization shifts labor-augmenting productivity and compare labor market power between SOEs and private firms.

Abstract coming soon.