International Technology Diffusion

9309935伊顿最近的许多宏观经济文献试图解释劳动生产率和增长率的国际差异，假设国际资本流动存在严重障碍，但技术的即时国际传播。相比之下，许多国际贸易文献将技术视为不完全流动，并试图将增长率和生活水平的差异归因于现有技术的差异。这项研究的目的是回答以下问题：(1)哪些因素决定了创新来自不同国家的速度？(2)特定国家的创新在多大程度上和多快地影响了其他国家的生产率？(3)各国吸收其他国家创新的倾向有何不同？(4)上述问题的答案对长期增长和生产率差异有何影响？技术与国际经济增长之间的关系是全球变化经济学的中心问题之一。关于不同环境政策的长期后果的未来情景取决于我们对这种关系的理解。此外，对国际资本流动的重视使这项研究与关于投资于国家民用基础设施的重要性的辩论相关，因为投资于民用基础设施的主要论点之一是，它提高了美国的生产率和相对于其他国家的增长率。更具体地说，研究人员从理论上和计量经济学上分析国家一级的技术创新过程，以及技术在国家之间的传播。该项目的一个组成部分是开发一套相互依存的经济体的宏观经济模型，该模型结合了国家一级的技术进步和资本积累，作为对增长的解释，并允许资本和技术在不同程度上的国际流动。最初的重点将放在总体层面，随后的工作将研究技术在个别行业内的创造和国际传播。该分析将利用经合组织有关行业生产率、研发支出、科学家和工程师的数据、耶鲁-加拿大专利数据，以及世界银行、赫斯顿和萨默斯提供的国民账户数据。***

9309935 Eaton Much of the recent macroeconomic literature seeking to explain international differences in labor productivity and in growth rates assumes severe impediments to international capital mobility but instantaneous international transmission of technology. In contrast, much of the international trade literature has treated technology as imperfectly mobile, and has sought to attribute differences in growth rates and in living standards to differences in available technologies. The purpose of this research is to answer the following questions: (1) What factors determine the rate at which innovations emanate from different countries? (2) To what extent and how rapidly do innovations in particular countries affect productivity elsewhere? (3) How do countries differ in terms of their propensity to absorb innovations from other countries? (4) What are the implications of the answers to the previous questions for long-run growth and productivity differentials? The relationship between technology and international economic growth is one of the central issues in the economics of global change. Future scenarios about the long-run consequences of different environmental policies depend on our understanding of this relationship. Also the emphasis on international capital mobility makes the research relevant to the debate about the significance of investments in national civil infrastructure because one of the principal arguments for investing in civil infrastructure is that it improves U.S. productivity and growth rates relative to other countries. More specifically, the investigators analyze theoretically and econometrically the process of technological innovation at the national level, and the diffusion of technologies across countries. One component of the project is the development of a macroeconomic model of a set of interdependent economies that incorporates technical progress and capital accumulation at the national level as explanations fo r growth, and that allows for varying degrees of international mobility of both capital and technology.l The model is adapted and used for econometric estimation and simulation. Initially the focus will be at the aggregate level, with subsequent work studying the creation and international diffusion of technology within individual industries. The analysis will make use of OECD data on industry- level productivity, R&D expenditures, and scientists and engineers, the Yale-Canada patent data, and national accounts data provided by the World Bank and by Heston and Summers. ***