Spanish firms’ use of artificial intelligence: recent progress and factors linked to its use
Jacob Hess, Diana Posada Restrepo · Documento ocasional/Documento ocasional - Banco de España · 4 Nov 2026
Where this sits in the debate
- Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? · its finding: it depends (why studies differ)
- Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?
Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model (AI-written).
Abstract
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) among Spanish firms has increased significantly between 2024 and 2026, although with substantial heterogeneity. While small and medium-sized firms continue to use AI primarily on an experimental basis, large firms use it more intensively, with persistent differences across firm sizes and sectors. The impact on employment remains limited, although improvements in productivity and investment are already emerging. AI-adopting firms are characterised by higher productivity, higher wages, and a larger share of intangible assets, pointing to complementarities between AI adoption and skilled human capital. Barriers to adoption vary across firms: resource constraints and the perception of limited usefulness are predominant among non-adopters, while a smaller group of firms faces technical or regulatory barriers.
About this publication
Unranked journal. A journal that is not on the economics or computer-science rankings this guide uses. That says nothing about one paper, but no ranking vouches for the journal’s review.
- Published
- 2026 (recently)
- Citations
- 0 (OpenAlex)
0 citations recorded by OpenAlex — too few 2026 papers in this collection for a fair comparison.
Reaches a different conclusion
Papers on the same question whose finding points the other way, as read from the abstracts by an AI model (AI-written). Why studies differ.
- Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence
Productivity: its finding supports the claim · Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang · 2023 - The simple macroeconomics of AI
Productivity: its finding goes against the claim · Daron Acemoğlu · 2024
Related papers
On the same debate questions, key papers first; related by topic, not by method or conclusion. Browse all: Productivity · Jobs.
- How Might Fiscal Policy Respond to the Rise of Artificial Intelligence?
Karen Dynan et al. · NBER · 2026 - Forecasting the Economic Effects of AI
Ezra Karger et al. · NBER · 2026 - Task Expansion with Generative AI: Experimental Evidence on Middle-Skilled, Early-Career Workers
Hanna Brosch et al. · CESifo · 2026 - Large Language Models, Small Labor Market Effects
Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard · NBER · 2025
Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata. How this site is built.