Drivers and Effects of Technology Adoption

一个国家的竞争力在很大程度上取决于其公司在生产中使用的技术。例如，最近对美国竞争力的担忧肯定可以追溯到美国公司使用的技术，以及外国竞争者的技术进步可能减少甚至消除了美国公司几十年前拥有的技术优势。即使在美国这样的发达国家，技术主要取决于公司的采用决定。因此，了解技术采用的驱动因素对于设计和实施促进经济增长的政策至关重要。不幸的是，我们对技术采用过程仍然知之甚少。该项目将揭示技术的驱动因素以及技术的各个方面如何促进生产力增长。本研究分为两个部分。第一部分将通过研究技术采用在过去200年中人均收入跨国分布演变中所起的作用，加深我们对技术采用后果的理解。第二部分研究技术采用的决定因素，重点放在现有理论文献中指出的三种类型的因素：金融市场的发展，地理距离采用领导者和政治机构。现有文献的一个显著缺点是，这些因素与技术的相关性几乎完全基于轶事证据。相比之下，本项目将利用一个全面的数据集，CHAT数据集，涵盖了过去200年来150多个国家100多项技术的传播，探讨这些因素的普遍重要性。这两个互补的研究方向将大大增加我们对技术与增长之间的联系以及技术的基本决定因素的认识。更广泛的影响：通过开发新的实证方法来使用CHAT数据集研究技术扩散，该项目将鼓励研究人员考虑影响技术扩散的其他因素，并使用CHAT来评估它们。 此外，更好地了解技术采用的驱动因素将为制定旨在提高美国经济生产力和竞争力的适当政策提供指导。最后但并非最不重要的是，该项目将向研究生和本科生助理介绍最先进的技术和数据集，这些技术和数据集将塑造他们作为经济学家的培训。

The competitiveness of a country is to a large extent determined by the technology used in production by its companies. For example, recent concerns regarding the competitiveness of the United States can surely be traced to the technology used by American companies and to the fact that the technological advances of foreign competitors may have reduced, or even eliminated, the technological advantage American companies had a few decades ago. Even in advanced countries like the U.S., technology is mainly determined by the adoption decisions of companies. Understanding the drivers of technology adoption is therefore essential for designing and implementing policies that foster economic growth. Unfortunately, we still know relatively little about the technology adoption processes. This project will shed light on the drivers of technology as well as on how various dimensions of technology contribute to productivity growth. The research is divided in two parts. The first will deepen our understanding of the consequences of technology adoption by studying the role that technology adoption has played in the evolution of the cross-country distribution of per-capita income over the last 200 years. The second part of the project studies the determinants of technology adoption, focusing on on three types of factors pinpointed by the existing theoretical literature: financial market development, geographic distance to adoption leaders and political institutions. One significant drawback of the existing literature is that the relevance of these factors for technology is based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence. In contrast, this project will explore the generic importance of these factors by exploiting a comprehensive dataset, the CHAT dataset, that covers the diffusion of more than 100 technologies in over 150 countries during the last 200 years. Taken together, these two complementary lines of research will increase significantly our knowledge about the connection between technology and growth as well as about the fundamental determinants of technology.Broader Impacts: By developing new empirical approaches to use the CHAT dataset to study technology diffusion, this project will encourage researchers to consider additional factors that influence technology diffusion and use CHAT to evaluate them. Additionally, better understanding of the drivers of technology adoption will provide guidance in the formulation of adequate policies directed to enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. economy. Last, but not least, the project will introduce both graduate and undergraduate student assistants to state of the art techniques and datasets that shall shape their training as economists.