How large are the welfare gains from trade? Would such gains be significantly amplified in the long run when productivity is endogenously enhanced? To address these questions, we focus on the dynamic effect of trade, in particular, how trade affects the incentives for technological advancement....

Most firms achieve perfective progress, incrementally improving commodities or productivity. But technological progress is concentrated in a few firms achieving metamorphic progress: forming or transforming industries with technological breakthroughs (e.g., biotechnology, lasers, semiconductors,...

To explain why trade restrictions sometimes speed up worldwide growth and sometimes slow it down, we exploit an analogy with the theory of consumer behavior. substitution effects make demand curves slope down, but income effects can increase or decrease the slope, and can sometimes overwhelm the...

We study the incentive that a government in the South has to protect the intellectual property rights of Northern firms, and the consequences of the decision taken by the South for welfare in the North and for efficiency of the world equilibrium. We conduct our analysis in the context of a...

We present a model of growth and technology transfer based on the idea that technologies are specific to particular combinations of inputs. We argue that this model is more realistic than the usual specification, in which an improvement in any technique for producing a given good improves all...

Technology is the driver of labor allocation across sectors and occupations. Is the impact of technological change on developing countries similar to its impact on developed countries? Will developing countries follow the same development path that developed economies have taken? Our approach...

Standard measures of bodyweight (overweight and obese, for example) fail to reflect technological progress over time - and in particular, recent progress disproportionately promoting longevity at higher bodyweights (and differences in access to it). This paper builds on the pioneering work of...

We study the lags with which new technologies are adopted across countries, and their long-run penetration rates once they are adopted. Using data from the last two centuries, we document two new facts: there has been convergence in adoption lags between rich and poor countries, while there has...

We study how opening to trade affects economic growth in a model where heterogeneous firms can choose to adopt a new technology already in use by other firms. We characterize the growth rate using summary statistics of the profit distribution--the ratio of profits between the average and...

We construct a model of the product cycle featuring endogenous innovation and endogenous technology transfer. Competitive entrepreneurs in the North expend resources to bring out new products whenever expected present discounted value of future oligopoly profits exceeds current product...