An Extensive Dataset on Historical Cross-Country Adoption

新技术的发明和采用是经济增长的主要驱动力之一。PI已经开发了历史越野技术采用(HCCTA)数据集。它包含一套历史时间序列，记录了过去200年来世界上20多个主要工业化国家采用20多项主要技术的模式。虽然对理解许多重要问题非常有用，但当前版本的HCCTA数据集至少有两个限制。首先，发展中国家在许多方面与发达经济体有着根本的不同。因此，目前尚不清楚从探索富国技术采用模式中学到的经验教训是否可以推广到穷国。其次，当前版本的HCCTA数据集包含的20多项技术不足以全面涵盖经济，无法对整个经济中的生产率决定因素做出推断。国际和平研究所建议扩大HCCTA数据集，以涵盖30多项额外技术和总共160多个国家。这一扩展将大大减轻当前版本的HCCTA数据集的局限性。除了扩展数据集之外，PI在本提案中还描述了它们将开展并充分利用HCCTA数据集的三维性质(国家--技术--时间)的各种项目。这些项目除其他外，包括探索技术采用在发达国家和发展中国家综合生产率增长中的作用，估计游说活动对新技术传播的影响，评估东亚奇迹中各种潜在增长来源的重要性，以及研究中国的成长过程与东亚奇迹之间的相似之处。有趣的是，其中一些辩论似乎走进了死胡同，部分原因是目前缺乏取得进展所需的数据。扩展的HCCTA数据集中包含的信息的结构和深度适合于加强关于这些重要专题的知识。更广泛的影响这项提议的主要外部性将是创建一个关于历史跨国技术采用模式的广泛数据集。在这一点上，唯一可比较的数据集是HCCTA数据集的当前版本。这样的数据集对于了解发达国家和发展中国家生活水平的决定因素的演变的潜在价值似乎非常大。与当前版本一样，扩展的HCCTA数据集将在NBER网站上公开提供。到目前为止的经验是，生产率增长、宏观经济学、技术变革和经济史领域的许多研究人员正在并将使用它。此外，这项建议中描述的研究项目以及其他研究人员今后使用HCCTA数据集撰写的论文都将涉及通常具有非常重要的政策影响的问题。众所周知，至少自卢卡斯(1993)以来，通过加快技术传播速度来影响经济增长率的政策可能会对生活水平产生重大的永久性影响。在这个意义上，我们希望扩展的HCCTA数据集将促进的研究不仅具有政策意义，而且将非常重要。最后但同样重要的是，该数据集的构建和分析将为两名学生提供在数据收集和统计以及动态宏观经济理论方面的培训机会。

The invention and adoption of new technologies is one of the main driving forces behind economic growth. The PI's have developed the Historical Cross Country Technology Adoption (HCCTA) dataset. It contains a set of historical time series that documents the adoption patterns of over twenty major technologies in more than twenty of the world's leading industrialized countries over the past two hundred years. Though very useful for understanding many important questions, the current version of the HCCTA dataset has at least two limitations. First, developing countries are in many dimensions fundamentally different to developed economies. Thus, it is not clear whether the lessons learnt from exploring the technology adoption patterns in rich countries are transferable to poor countries. Second, the more than 20 technologies contained in the current version of the HCCTA dataset do not cover the economy comprehensively enough to draw inference on the determinants of productivity in the economy as a whole. The PI's propose expanding the HCCTA dataset to cover over 30 additional technologies and a total of over 160 countries. This expansion would substantially mitigate the limitations of the current version of the HCCTA dataset.In addition to extending the dataset, the PI's describe, in this proposal, various projects that they will undertake and that take full advantage of the three dimensional nature (country-technology-time) of the HCCTA dataset. These projects include, among others, exploring the role of technology adoption in aggregate productivity growth in developed and developing countries, estimating the effect of lobbying activities on the diffusion of new technologies, evaluating the importance of the various potential sources of growth in the East Asian miracles and studying the similarities between the growth processes of China and the East Asian miracles. Interestingly, some of these debates seem to have reached a dead end partly due to the current lack of data necessary to make progress. The structure and depth of the information contained in the extended HCCTA dataset are suitable to enhance knowledge on these important topics. Broader ImpactThe main externality from this proposal will be the creation of an extensive dataset on historical cross-country technology adoption patterns. At this point, the only comparable dataset is the current version of the HCCTA dataset. The potential value of such a dataset for the evolution of understanding of the determinants of living standards both in advanced and in developing countries seems very large. Just like the current version, the extended HCCTA dataset will be publicly available at the NBER web site. The experience so far is that many researchers in the fields of productivity growth, macroeconomics, technological change and economic history are and will be using it. In addition, both the research projects described in this proposal and the papers written in the future by other researchers using the HCCTA dataset will be about issues that typically have very important policy implications. It is well known, at least since Lucas (1993), that policies that affect the growth rate of an economy by accelerating the speed of diffusion of technologies may have significant permanent effects on living standards. In this sense, the research that we hope that theextended HCCTA dataset will facilitate will not only have policy implications but these will be very important.Last but not least, the construction and analysis of this dataset will provide the opportunity to train two students both in data collection and statistics as well as in dynamic macroeconomic theory.