Did breakthroughs in core processes during the Industrial Revolution tend to generate further innovations in downstream technologies? Here a theoretical model examines the effect of a political shock on a non-innovating society in which there is high potential willingness to cooperate. The...

Knowledge exchange, innovation policy, and international trade flows are key aspects of the knowledge-based economy. In her introduction to the special issue on The Knowledge-Based Society: Transition, Geography, and Competition Policy the author briefly reviews these aspects. She begins with...

This paper studies the impact of the first joint licensing platform for patented drugs, the Medicines Patent Pool, on global drug diffusion and innovation. The pool allows generic firms worldwide to license drug bundles cheaply and conveniently for sales in a set of developing countries. I...

This paper identifies over 50 000 patents filed worldwide in various water-related adaptation technologies between 1990 and 2010, distinguishing between those related to water availability (supply) and water conservation (demand) technologies. The paper then analyses the innovation activity –...

This paper examines to what degree trade, FDI and migration promote cellphone usage in developed and developing countries. Since the usage of cellphones requires the installation of costly infrastructure, I analyze the intensive and extensive margin of cellphone diffusion separately. Estimating...

We examine the extent to which foreign R&D satellites of multinational firms act as a medium for the international diffusion of knowledge. Using patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, we compare the frequency with which headquarters patents are cited by third-party firms in...

Innovation is an inherently risky and uncertain process. Many of the broader challenges to innovation in general are both mirrored and exaggerated in environmental innovation. The four primary issues are externalities, uncertainty, asymmetric information, market power. Green technology is...

This article presents new international estimates of human capital for the period 1970–2003. The new latent index is used to re-examine the Benhabib and Spiegel (2005) model of technology diffusion in a horse-race with the competing indicators of Barro and Lee (2010) and Hanushek and Wößmann...

This chapter examines how international flows of technological knowledge affect economic performance across industries and firms across different countries. Motivated by the large share of the world's technology investments made by firms that are active across country borders, we focus on...