In this speech, which was delivered to Australian Business Economists annual forecasting conference on 13 February 2024, Head of Economic Analysis Department Marion Kohler spoke about our outlook for the economy, our assessment of spare capacity and changes we're making to enhance transparency.

Transcript

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General-purpose technologies (GPT) have the potential to transform how we work, to change the skills we need and to drive productivity growth. It is therefore important to understand the conditions that lead to the successful adoption of GPT.

In this episode, hear from Kim Nguyen on how she, and co-author Jonathan Hambur, used a novel database to assess the adoption of cloud computing and artificial intelligence/machine learning. They found the COVID-19 pandemic led to a short-lived surge in adoption of cloud computing technologies. They also found that profitable adoption is more likely to occur in firms where the Board has members with relevant technological backgrounds, and that firms adopting GPT are more likely to seek staff with related skills. These findings highlight the importance of workers’ and managers’ skills in technology adoption, and the impact this can have on productivity growth.

Guest

Economist Kim Nguyen

Additional Resources

Adoption of General-purpose Technologies (GPT) in Australia: The Role of Skills | Bulletin – September 2023 | RBA

Earnings call transcripts are a rich and timely source of information about firms’ own business conditions, as well as economic and financial conditions more broadly. The sentiment and language used during these calls provide additional context, nuance and insights that are valuable for economists trying to understand how firms make choices and how those choices affect prices.

In this episode, learn about the work of Callan Windsor and Max Zang to process and analyse over 700,000 paragraphs of text extracted from around 5,500 transcripts collected since the start of 2007 using a state-of-the-art large language model. The purpose of this was to better understand firms’ price-setting behaviour.

Guest

Data Science Team Manager Callan Windsor

Additional Resources

Reading through the Lines: Price-setting Indicators from Earnings Calls | Bulletin – September 2023 | RBA

Abstract for RDP 2023-06: Firms' Price-setting Behaviour: Insights from Earnings Calls | RBA

Transcript

‘READING THROUGH THE LINES’ PODCAST – TRANSCRIPT (rba.gov.au)