The doctoral committee was composed of Dr. Luis Díaz-Serrano (University Rovira i Virgili), Dr. Nestor Duch-Brown (JRC-European Commission) and Dr. Caroline Paunov (OECD), who decided to grade the PhD thesis with an “Excellent” mark with the mention of Cum Laude.

The thesis analyses the impact of technology on productivity and development, under the hypothesis that the effect varies depending on some features of the firms and the economies as a whole. Juan’s dissertation consists of three essay. The first one shows that the benefits of technological diffusion for the EU regions significantly depend on their absorptive capacity. The second exercise provides evidence on the heterogeneity of the effect of the deployment and use of high-speed Internet connection on the region’s productivity in an emergent country like Brazil. Finally, the last exercise studies the effect of the extension of Internet in the distribution of the level of productivity of the Latin American firms.