Canaries in the Gold Mine: Early Productivity Gains from Artificial Intelligence Creating Organization Capital
Tania Babina, Alex X. He, Renhao Jiang · NBER Working Papers · August 2026
Where this sits in the debate
- Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? · its finding: it depends (why studies differ)
Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model (AI-written).
Key takeaway AI-written
Using a firm-level measure of AI investment based on AI-skilled employment, this NBER paper finds that AI investments are associated with productivity growth in recent years but not over the previous decade, and traces the gains to the build-up of organization capital.
Abstract
Using a new firm-level measure of AI investment based on AI-skilled employmentspanning machine learning through generative and agentic AIwe show that AI investments are associated with productivity growth in recent years, but not over the previous decade. We trace the productivity gains to the
About this publication
Working paper. A working paper — circulated for discussion before formal peer review, the standard first outlet in economics.
- Published
- 2026
- Citations
- Not recorded for this source
Citation counts come from OpenAlex; none are recorded for this source — absence of a count is not absence of citations.
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