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The Global Diffusion of Ideas

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  • Francisco Buera

    (University of California at Los Angeles)

Abstract

We provide a tractable theory of innovation and diffusion of technologies to explore the role of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). We model innovation and diffusion as a process involving the combination of new ideas with insights from other industries or countries. We provide conditions for the equilibrium distribution of productivity in each country to be Frechet, and derive a system of differential equations describing the evolution of the scale parameter of these distributions, i.e., the stock of ideas. In particular, the growth of the stock of ideas in a countries is a weighted sum of the stock of ideas in all countries, where the weights are given by trade and FDI shares. We use this framework to quantify the dynamics gains from trade and FDI.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco Buera, 2014. "The Global Diffusion of Ideas," 2014 Meeting Papers 1099, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed014:1099
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade

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