An Exploration of Technology Diffusion

Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn

No 08-093, Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School

Abstract: We develop a model that, at the aggregate level, is similar to the one sector neoclassical growth model, while, at the disaggregate level, has implications for the path of observable measures of technology adoption. We estimate our model using data on the diffusion of 15 technologies in 166 countries over the last two centuries. We evaluate the implications of our estimates for aggregate TFP and per capita income. Our results reveal that, on average, countries have adopted technologies 47 years after their invention. There is substantial variation across technologies and countries. Over the past two centuries, newer technologies have been adopted faster than old ones. The cross-country variation in the adoption of technologies accounts for at least a quarter of per capita income differences.

Keywords: economic growth; technology adoption; cross-country studies. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 O14 O33 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2008-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ict
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-093.pdf Revised version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: An Exploration of Technology Diffusion (2010)
Working Paper: An Exploration of Technology Diffusion (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hbs:wpaper:08-093

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by HBS ().