Head in the cloud: firm performance and cloud service : conference paper / Henry McMillan, Tim Murray, Catherine de Fontenay, Ralph Lattimore

"There is good evidence that cloud services improve productivity. Such services allow businesses totailor their computing resources more flexibly to their organisational needs, avoiding the large fixed costs of conventional computing solutions, and enable new ways of working. COVID-19 undoubtedly further increased the uptake and application of cloud computing because it suited remote working and the virtual delivery of services. But there is little empirical evidence about the extent to which cloud services increase firm performance and returns to labour, the types of firms where this occurs or the role of complementary inputs. This paper uses a novel application of machine learning tools (causal forests) to data from the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE) to assess the impacts of cloud computing services."--Abstract.