SCIENCE@home

Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evidence from a Large Digital Platform

Erik Brynjolfsson,Xiang Hui,Meng Liu

Published 2018 in Management Sciences

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is surpassing human performance in a growing number of domains. However, there is limited evidence of its economic effects. Using data from a digital platform, we study a key application of AI: machine translation. We find that the introduction of a new machine translation system has significantly increased international trade on this platform, increasing exports by 10.9%. Furthermore, heterogeneous treatment effects are consistent with a substantial reduction in translation costs. Our results provide causal evidence that language barriers significantly hinder trade and that AI has already begun to improve economic efficiency in at least one domain. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-49 of 49 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-100 of 286 citing papers · Page 1 of 3

123
Next