1998 Franco-American Seminar.

• Position: Seminar of the National Bureau of Economic Research

Nearly 80 economists from eight countries met in Nice on June 22-3 for the NBER's Eleventh Annual Franco-American Seminar on "Information and Communications Technologies, Employment and Earnings." This year's seminar was co-sponsored by the Conseil Superieur de L'emploi, des revenus et des couts (CSERC - Higher Council for Employment, Income, and Costs) in Paris, and by the European network on the Econometrics of Innovation and Productivity. The meeting was organized by Nathalie Greenan, Centre d'Etudes de L'Emploi; Yannick L'Horty, CSERC; and Jacques Mairesse, NBER and CREST. Michel Dolle, CSERC; Jean-Luc Gaffard, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis; Michel Gollac, Centre d'Etudes de l'Emploi; and Jean-Pierre Laffargue, University Paris I and Cepremap, were also part of the scientific committee.

The contributors were asked to summarize their past research in the field and present their reflections on the productivity paradox, the technological bias, or the policy implications of the diffusion of information and communication technologies. The following papers were presented and discussed during the three plenary sessions (about twenty papers were also) presented in parallel sessions):

Jack Triplett, Brookings Institution, "The Mismeasurement Hypothesis and the Productivity Slowdown"

Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT, "Do the Effects of Information and Communications Technologies on the Organization of Firms anti Market Structures Allow Us to Explain the Productivity Paradox?"

Vincenzo Spiezia, ILO, and Marco Vivarelli, Catholic University of Piacenza, "What Do We Know About the Effects of Information and Communications Technologies on Employment Levels?"

Lucy Chennels and John Van Reenen, Institute For Fiscal Studies, "Technical Change and the Structure of Employment and Wages: A Survey of the Micro-Econometric Evidence"

Kathryn Shaw, NBER and Carnegie-Mellon University, "HRM Practices, Knowledge Capital and the Changing Access to 'Good' Jobs: An Essay on the Sources of Rising Income Inequality"

Henri Sneessens, Catholic University of Louvain, "Technological Bias And Unemployment: A Macroeconomic Perspective"

Timothy F. Bresnahan, NBER and Stanford University, "Computerization and Labor Demand: Agenda for Testing and Forecast for the Future"

Michel Catinat, European Commission, "The Emergence of the Information Society and Employment, Training and Manpower Management Policies"

Does the productivity paradox merely amount to problems of statistical...