I discuss the concept and empirical importance of international technology diffusion from the point of view of recent work on endogenous technological change. In this literature, technology is viewed as technological knowledge. I first review the major concepts, and how international technology...

It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations which benefit society largely through their use as building blocks to future inventions may require a different scope of protection in order to be encouraged. We model the problem...

This paper examines the evidence on technology diffusion through trade in differentiated intermediate goods. Because intermediates are invented through costly research and development (R&D) investments, employing imported intermediates implies an implicit sharing of the technology that was...

This paper considers forecasting a single time series using more predictors than there are time series observations. The approach is to construct a relatively few indexes, akin to diffusion indexes, which are weighted averages of the predictors, using an approximate dynamic factor model....

Studies of firm-level data have shown that a firm's R&D and the R&D of other firms increase conventional factor productivity. We investigate these phenomena further by examining the relationship between plant-level productivity and firm-level R&D. We find that (1) the productivity-enhancing...

An economy benefits from advances in technical frontiers only when new technology comes into general use. This paper measures the diffusion of computing equipment at a time when computing technology underwent dramatic technical improvement. These data shed light on the long lag between advances...

The usual explanation for why the producers of a given product use different technologies involves "vintage-capital": A firm understands the frontier technology, but can still prefer an older, less efficient technology in which it has made specific physical and human capital investments. This...

In this paper we analyze the evidence from a large number of studies on three specific questions pertaining to R&D investment: (1) Are there diminishing returns to inventive activities? (2) What is the relationship between R&D and productivity and what are the magnitudes of the returns to a...

The pace of industrial innovation and growth is shaped by many forces that interact in complicated ways. Profit-maximizing firms pursue new ideas to obtain market power, but the pursuit of the same goal by other means that even successful inventions art eventually superseded by others; this...