Plant Age and Technology use in U.S. Manufacturing Industries

Abstract

In this article, I use a new dataset on advanced technology usage in U.S. manufacturing plants to describe how technology use varies by plant age and size. The data come from the 1988 Survey of Manufacturing Technology (SMT) and cover a wide range of technologies and a large group of fabrication and assembly industries. Both old and young plants appear to use advanced manufacturing technology at similar frequencies. As in previous studies, I find that larger plants are more likely to employ newer technologies than are smaller plants.