Who uses Advanced Technologies? Evidence from Manufacturing Firms from 38 Countries in 2025

The use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, or smart devices will go hand in hand with, among others, higher productivity, higher product quality, more exports and better chances to survive any crisis. Better firms tend to use advanced technologies. Information on firm level determinants of adoption of these technologies, therefore, is important to inform industrial policies. This paper uses firm level data for manufacturing enterprises from 38 countries collected in 2025 to shed further light on this issue by investigating the link between the use of advanced technologies and firm characteristics. Applying a new machine-learning estimator, Kernel-Regularized Least Squares (KRLS), which does not impose any restrictive assumptions for the functional form of the relation between use of advanced technologies, firm characteristics and any control variables, we find that firms which use advanced technologies tend to be larger and more innovation orientated, while firm age does not matter.