Empirical evidence suggests that there has been a divergence over time in income distributions across countries and within countries. In this paper we study a simple dynamic general equilibrium model of technology adoption which is consistent with these stylized facts. In our model, growth is endogenous, and agents are assumed to be heterogeneous in their initial holdings of wealth and capital. We find that in the presence of barriers or costs associated with the adoption of more productive technologies, inequalities in wealth and income may increase over time tending to delay the convergence in international income differences. The model is also capable of explaining the observed diversity in the growth pattern of transitional economies. According to the model, this diversity may be the result of variability in adoption costs, or the relative position of a transitional economy in the world income distribution.
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