More recent scholarly works focus on investment in intangibles (e.g., digital platforms). Online platforms have the potential to increase market efficiency, enhance business opportunities, and boost productivity. Moreover, digital platforms are correcting market failures by addressing information asymmetries. For example, Vergara Cobos (2020) finds that e-hailing technologies in the taxicab market in New York City had a positive causal effect on product demand benefiting both incumbents and new entrants, while at the same time, placing them as complements. In this sense, OECD (2021) finds a positive association between online platform diffusion and incumbents’ productivity growth. This effect could be explained through different channels like encouraging incumbents to innovate (e.g., the case of the Uber technology being applied in yellow taxicabs), upgrading market logistics, reducing information asymmetries, and ultimately, making markets more efficient. Moreover, digital platforms could present positive profit effects through new pricing mechanisms as noted by Li et al. (2019) who find that the online travel platform Booking.com has increased its clients’ revenue by 7 percent, on average, through its pricing strategy which matches firms with consumers willing to pay more.

_Table 2: Main empirical findings from studies on ICT adoption and firm-level growth_

|**Productivity**|**Main conclusions**|**Sample**|**Time coverage**|
|---|---|---|---|
|Cardona et al. (2013)|Summarizes the empirical literature on ICT adoption<br>and productivity.|Global|1957-2012|
||No causal effect of broadband Internet adoption and|||
|Bertschek et al. (2013)|productivity, by using data from German<br>manufacturing and services firms from 2001 to 2003.|Germany|2001-2003|
|Aboal and Tacsir (2015)|ICT has a significant and positive effect on the<br>productivity of both manufacturing and services<br>firms.|Uruguay|2004-2006 and<br>2007-2009|
|DeStefano et al. (2018)|ICT adoption causally affects firm size (measured by<br>sales or employees) but not productivity.|UK|2000|
|Cusolito et al. (2020)|Significant effects of DT adoption on firms’ revenue<br>and productivity.|Global|1980-2000|
|Goldfarb and Tucker<br>(2019)|Lower search costs driven by digitalization reduce<br>both price and price dispersion, increase the variety<br>of products, and facilitate matching processes.|Global|1961-2019|
|Verhoogen (2020)|DT adoption is linked to the internationalization of<br>firms, especially, to exporting activities.|Global|1957-2021|
||Positive relationship between usage of the Internet|||
|Tseng and Johnsen (2011)|and a firm’s internationalization process of the UK<br>manufacturing small and medium enterprises.|UK|NA|
||The impact of Internet adoption on productivity is|||
|Colombo et al. (2013)|negligible, but broadband application engender<br>productivity if combined with organizational changes.|<br>Italy|1998-2004|
|Díaz-Chao et. al (2015)|Wages affects more productivity than ICT use in<br>small firms in Spain.|Spain|2009|
|Hagsten and Kotnik<br>(2017)|Positive relationship between ICT capacity of small<br>and medium-size European firms and engagement in<br>exporting activities.|Europe|2010|

12