Abstract
Since the information technology revolution in 2000, businesses worldwide have adopted information and communication technology (ICT) and big data. Recent studies attribute the origin of productivity growth in Europe and the United States to the depth of ICT utilization. We investigate whether that is the case in Japan. We measure the productivity of five manufacturing and eleven services industries in Japan and observe how it changed before and after 2000. Our results suggest that productivity increased for providers of ICT products but not for providers of ICT services. Moreover, productivity rose after 2000 in seven services industries that are users of ICT. Japanese firms are predominantly small and medium-sized and we conclude that the productivity findings for western countries are also observed for Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises.