This paper empirically evaluates the relative importance of embodied versus disembodied idea flows in explaining income gaps and idea gaps. Trade is used as a measure of embodied idea flows and telephone call traffic a measure of disembodied flows. Since both trade and telephone traffic may be endogenous, this paper uses the geographic, linguistic, and colonial components of trade and telephone traffic as instruments to identify their effects on income and total factor productivity (TFP). The results provide little support for the embodied object models when both trade and telephone traffic are included in the regressions. Telephone traffic has a quantitatively much large effect on income per worker and TFP than trade.
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Paper provided by National University of Singapore, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number
wp0102.
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.:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 1998.
"The Quality of Goverment,"
NBER Working Papers
6727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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