If Technology Has Arrived Everywhere, Why Has Income Diverged?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Comin, Diego; Mestieri, Marti
• 署名单位: Dartmouth College; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Northwestern University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20150175
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 137-178
• 关键词: growth; ECONOMICS; MODEL; too

摘要

We study the cross-country evolution of technology diffusion over the last two centuries. We document that adoption lags between poor and rich countries have converged, while the intensity of use of adopted technologies of poor countries relative to rich countries has diverged. The evolution of aggregate productivity implied by these trends in technology diffusion resembles the actual evolution of the world income distribution in the last two centuries. Cross-country differences in adoption lags account for a significant part of the cross-country income divergence in the nineteenth century. The divergence in intensity of use accounts for the divergence during the twentieth century.