We investigate technological change with regard to CO2 emissions by passenger cars, using a Free Disposal Hull methodology to estimate technological frontiers. We have a sample of cars available in the UK market in the period 2000 – 2007. Our results show that the rates of technological change (frontier movement) and diffusion (distance to frontier at the car brand level) differ substantial bet...

We exploit historical data on planned highways, railroads, and exploration routes as sources of exogenous variation, in order to estimate the effect of interstate highways on regional innovation: a 10% increase in a region?s stock of highways causes a 1.7% increase in regional patenting over a five-year period. In terms of the mechanism, we report evidence that roads facilitate local knowledge ...

We reconcile trade theory with plant-level export behavior, extending the Ricardian model to accommodate many countries, geographic barriers, and imperfect competition. Our model captures qualitatively basic facts about U.S. plants: (i) productivity dispersion, (ii) higher productivity among exporters, (iii) the small fraction who export, (iv) the small fraction earned from exports among export...

We use a randomized control trial to measure how the free distribution of modern inputs for maize production affects their adoption in the subsequent season. Information collected through sales workshops where modern inputs were sold revealed that the average purchase quantity of free-input recipients was much higher than that of non-recipients; that of the neighbors of recipients fell in-betwe...

There is substantial empirical evidence that innovation is geographically concentrated. Unlike what is generally assumed, however, it is not clear that localised knowledge spillovers provide a theoretically valid explanation for this. Studying spillovers of cost-reducing technology between Cournot oligopolists we show that 1) localised knowledge spillovers of any level do encourage agglomeratio...

This paper extends the standard quality ladder model of innovation and quality growth by allowing for heterogeneous industries. This enables us not only to deal with the Schumpeterian hypothesis about market power and innovation, but also to analyze industry specific demand pull and technology push effects. In accordance with the empirical evidence, we show that perspective of large market powe...

This paper examines the impact of the outsourcing of production on the volume and composition of the home country’s research and development. We find that outsourcing decreases the process R&D of the multinational firm in large markets when it only conducts process R&D (the substitution effect between outsourcing and process R&D). Outsourcing tends to emerge as a complementary factor to product...

Improving technologies create a “buy or wait?” dilemma. In this paper, we consider repeat purchases when the consumer faces an infinite stream of new technologies. We develop a probabilistic model and focus on the role of “more variability” on the process of technological innovation. Similar to real options models, we find that variability in the technological process increases value for the co...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights, market integration will systematically shift technical change in favor of rich nations. For this reason, free trade can increase international income differences. At the same time, integration with countries where intellectual property rights are weakly protected can have a large adverse effect on the worl...

We use textual analysis of high-dimensional data from patent documents to create new indicators technological innovation. identify important patents based on similarity a given previous and subsequent work: these are distinct work but related innovations. Our importance correlate with existing measures quality also provide complementary information. breakthrough innovations as the most patents—...