If technological innovations in the North can be costlessly imitated by educated workers in the South, and if education decisions are endogenous, why aren't all countries well-educated and rich? This paper explores a possible answer: if technologically advanced sectors, operating under increasing returns to scale, need a minimum pool of educated workers to commence production, then coordination failure can arise in the choice of education. A simple two-sector model is shown to yield multiple equilibria: countries that perform well educationally and adopt technology successfully can co-exist with countries that fail in both endeavors.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General O30 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - General
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Daron Acemoglu & Fabrizio Zilbotti, 1999.
"Productivity Differences,"
NBER Working Papers
6879, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Acemoglu, Daron & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 1998.
"Productivity Differences,"
Seminar Papers
660, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
[Downloadable!]