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Long-Term Barriers to the International Diffusion of Innovations / Enrico Spolaore, Romain Wacziarg.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Spolaore, Enrico.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w17271.
- NBER working paper series no. w17271
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.
- Summary:
- We document an empirical relationship between the cross-country adoption of technologies and the degree of long-term historical relatedness between human populations. Historical relatedness is measured using genetic distance, a measure of the time since two populations' last common ancestors. We find that the measure of human relatedness that is relevant to explain international technology diffusion is genetic distance relative to the world technological frontier ("relative frontier distance"). This evidence is consistent with long-term historical relatedness acting as a barrier to technology adoption: societies that are more distant from the technological frontier tend to face higher imitation costs. The results can help explain current differences in total factor productivity and income per capita across countries.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- August 2011.
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