Fact of the Week: Old, Small Manufacturing Firms are 19 Percent More Likely to be Persistently Nondigital Than Large Manufacturing Firms

Source: Désirée Rückert, Reinhilde Veugelers, Christoph Weiss, “The growing digital divide in Europe and the United States,” European Investment Bank Working Paper No. 2020/07, April 2020.

Commentary: Digital technology adoption has spread rapidly through the economy, revolutionizing many processes. A new study examines how this change has taken place, interviewing 1,700 companies across the United States and European Union. It finds that old, small manufacturing firms are 19 percent less likely than large firms to have invested in digital technology or to have plans to do so in the next three years. Old, small firms in the services sector are 15 percent less likely than their large counterparts.