Innovation, technology diffusion, and income inequality under interdependent foreign market entry

技术是经济增长和繁荣的主要决定因素之一。为了提高生活水平，需要改进现有技术，需要发明新技术。这个世界的特点是少数几个技术领先者，他们容纳了大部分全球创新。然而，落后的国家受益于这种技术进步，因为知识跨越了行业和国家边界。这些溢出效应有助于经济活动的分配，从而促进世界各地的收入分配。这一研究项目旨在从多个方面提高我们对技术的生产和分配及其在全球经济中的后果的理解。第一个贡献是方法论。国际贸易文献在很大程度上忽略了外国市场进入决策的相互依存性。相互依存意味着，向一个外国市场出口的决定不会影响在国内市场或其他外国市场上赚取的利润。虽然这是一个简化的假设，以确保分析的可操作性，但它可能是以不准确地估计国际贸易的福利影响为代价的。我建议用一种新的随机方法来克服计算的局限性。这种方法对许多问题都有影响，比如从出口中学习，不完整的劳动力和信贷市场，或全球采购。第二个主要贡献是主题，并将建议的方法应用于许多问题。首先，知识是如何跨国界(可能是跨部门)扩散的，这种扩散对国际贸易流动、工资和福利有什么作用？在评估这些影响方面，相互依赖的市场准入起到了什么作用？我通过个人创新决策和技术扩散扩展了一个标准贸易模型。结构评估使我们能够了解经济渠道及其规模。在第二个子项目中，我重点介绍跨国生产。除了出口，公司还可以选择更多的外国生产地点，他们可能会从这些地点向某些目的地出口。近年来，这类模型得到了广泛应用，强调了多国生产的相关性，以更准确地估计福利影响。然而，最近的研究忽略了特定于企业的技术决策、知识扩散和相互依存的市场进入。因此，我期待着在估计国际贸易的福利影响方面有新的见解。第三组有趣的问题与不平等有关。在知识扩散较少或没有扩散的情况下，各国的相对GDP会是什么样子？这对国内的不平等有什么影响？为了解决这一问题，我将模型扩展到不完全劳动力市场，以使特定国家的工资分配合理化，以回应公司的技术决策和知识的传播。

Technology is one of the main determinants of economic growth and prosperity. To raise the standard of living, existing technology needs to be improved and new technology needs to be invented. The world is characterized by a few technological leaders that accommodate the bulk of global innovation. Lagging countries, however, benefit from this technological progress as knowledge spills across industry and country borders. These spillovers contribute to the distribution of economic activity and thus income around the world. This research project aims at improving our understanding of the production and distribution of technology and its consequences in the global economy in a number of ways.The first contribution is methodological. The international trade literature largely ignores the interdependence of foreign market entry decisions. Interdependence means that the decision to export to one foreign market does not affect profits earned on the domestic market or on other foreign markets. While this is a simplifying assumption to ensure analytical tractability, it may come at the expense of estimating the welfare effects of international trade inaccurately. I suggest a novel stochastic approach to overcome the computational limitations. This approach has implications for numerous questions like learning from exporting, incomplete labor and credit markets, or global sourcing.The second major contribution is topical and applies the suggested approach to a number of questions. First, how does knowledge diffuse across borders (and potentially across sectors) and what role does this diffusion play for international trade flows, wages, and welfare? What is the role of interdependent market entry for estimating these effects? I extend a standard trade model by individual innovation decisions and technology diffusion. Structural estimation allows us to learn about economic channels and their magnitudes.In a second sub-project, I focus on multinational production. In addition to exporting, firms can choose additional foreign production sites from which they may potentially export to certain destinations. Such models have been widely applied in recent years stressing the relevance of multinational production to estimate welfare effects more accurately. However, recent work has ignored firm-specific technology decisions, knowledge diffusion and interdependent market entry. I am thus expecting novel insights for the estimation of welfare effects of international trade.A third interesting set of questions relates to inequality. How would countries' relative GDP look like with less or no diffusion of knowledge? What are the implications for within-country inequality? To address this aspect, I extend the model with incomplete labor markets to rationalize country-specific wage distributions that respond to the technology decisions of firms and the diffusion of knowledge.