Normally, economists take the size of countries as an exogenous variable. Nevertheless, the borders of countries and their size change, partially in response to economic factors such as the pattern of international trade. Conversely, the size of countries influences their economic performance...

What obstacles prevent the most productive technologies from spreading to less developed economies from the world’s technological frontier? In this paper, we seek to shed light on this question by quantifying the geographic and human barriers to the transmission of technologies. We argue that...