Data-Driven Automation

Maryam Farboodi, Andrew J. Koh, Anchi Xia · NBER Working Papers · June 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).

Key takeaway AI-written

This NBER paper builds a dynamic model of automation where task-specific data accumulates endogenously as a byproduct of economic activity and generates cross-task spillovers that raise productivity elsewhere. It matters as a theoretical foundation for treating data — rather than just compute or algorithms — as the accumulable capital driving automation dynamics, with implications for how automation propagates unevenly across tasks and for data policy.

The paper in three steps AI-written

Written by an AI agent from the paper's abstract, which is the primary source and is quoted below.

The question

How does data, as an input that builds up from economic activity, shape the automation of tasks over time?

The approach

The authors build a dynamic model in which data is heterogeneous and task-specific, accumulates endogenously as a byproduct of economic activity, and spills over so that data generated by one task can raise productivity in another.

The findings

The available abstract describes the model's structure and its analysis of the transition path, but it is cut off before stating the results.

How to read it: theory. A theoretical model — its value is the mechanism it isolates; ask whether the assumptions fit the real economy.

Limitations and counterpoints AI-written

This is a theoretical model; its conclusions depend on its assumptions about how data accumulates and spills over, and the available abstract does not report the results.

Abstract

We build a dynamic model of data-driven automation in which data (i) is heterogeneous and task-specific; (ii) accumulates endogenously as a byproduct of economic activity; and (iii) exhibits spillovers such that data generated by one task can augment the productivity of another. Along the transition

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.