Download Free The Diffusion Of Technology And Inequality Among Nations Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Diffusion Of Technology And Inequality Among Nations and write the review.

This dissertation uses theoretical as well as empirical tools to study determinants of cross-country differences in income growth, focussing on the role of consumer inequality, values, and the diffusion process of technologies. Chapter 1 investigates how household income inequality shapes the diffusion of technologies. A simple demand side model with hierarchical preferences is used to show that after some minimum level of average income relative to the price of the technology is achieved, more consumer inequality hinders the diffusion process for new technologies. Using data on 39 major technologies, the empirical part tests this proposition. It is found that more inequality, as measured by the Gini index, is detrimental to the diffusion of new technology, while a large middle class is conducive to technology diffusion. These effects are stronger for consumer than for producer technologies. Furthermore, there is some evidence that the negative effect of inequality on the diffusion of technologies is more pronounced in rich countries. For the extensive margin, the chapter presents evidence for a positive effect of inequality on technology adoption. Chapter 2 introduces a model of creative destruction with non-homothetic preferences for quality to study the joint growth effects of inequality and openness. While the growth effects of consumer inequality are non-trivial, the chapter shows that once it is possible for rich consumers to import high quality goods, higher inequality interacted with more openness has a negative impact on quality upgrading in countries that are not operating at the technology frontier. This effect materializes through reduced incentives for domestic firms to innovate. The empirical analysis uses sectoral quality data to investigate these model predictions. It is shown that for developing countries, consumer inequality and openness indeed have a joint negative effect on the rate of quality upgrading. Chap.
Based on stylized evidence showing variation of the Gini coefficient of income inequality across skill cohorts and on the rapid rise in trade in technology-intensive goods, the ripple effects of technology transmission and income inequality are explored in a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) framework. An exogenous technology shock transmitted via trade from the United States induces productivity growth in developing regions. This spillover capture-aided by absorptive capability, better governance and institutions, technological symmetry and social acceptance-causes income to increase and income inequality to decline. The conjoined parameters retard growth's inequality-enhancing effect and thus facilitate long-run convergence of inequality between nations.
One usually accounts for output growth in terms of the growth of the primary inputs: labor, physical capital, and possibly human capital. In this paper we account for growth with labor and with intermediate goods. Because we have no measures of the extent of adoption of most intermediate goods in most countries, we have to assume something about how they spread, based on what we see in U.S. data. We find that if all countries have (al the same production function, (b) the same speed of adoption technology, and (c) imperfectly correlated technology shocks, then we can easily account for the extent and persistence of inequality among nations. Unfortunately, while it easily generates the sorts of low frequency movements that we observe, our technology shock seems to have little to do with high frequency movements in GNP so that if our definition of this shock is correct, real business cycle models are way off the mark.
Susan Cozzens, Dhanaraj Thakur, and the other co-authors ask how the benefits and costs of emerging technologies are distributed amongst different countries _ some rich and some poor. Examining the case studies of five technologies across eight countri
This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
We examine the relationship between trade and financial globalization and the rise in inequality in most countries in recent decades. We find technological progress as having a greater impact than globalization on inequality. The limited overall impact of globalization reflects two offsetting tendencies: whereas trade globalization is associated with a reduction in inequality, financial globalization-and foreign direct investment in particular-is associated with an increase. A key finding is that both globalization and technological changes increase the returns on human capital, underscoring the importance of education and training in both developed and developing countries in addressing rising inequality.
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
We study the effects of income inequality on technology adoption lags and on long-run technology penetration rates. Building on the model and findings of Comin and Mestieri (2013a), we analyze a sample of 72 countries between 1960 and 1995. They find converging adoption lags and diverging penetration rates between Western and non-Western countries. This evolution explains 80% of the Great Income Divergence between the two country groups. Applying pooled OLS, we find that it matters where in the income distribution the inequality appears, which confirms our theoretical predictions. In contrast, overall inequality measured by the Gini coefficient is too broad to be significant. Hence, quantile income shares are crucial. Distortion-free redistribution from the rich to the poor decreases the adoption lag. Moreover, a higher income share of the middle class at the expense of the rich or the poor increases the adoption lag. When it comes to the long run technology penetration rate, we find that lower overall inequality increases the penetration. Increasing the income share of the middle class at the expense of the rich or the poor increases the penetration rate. Our results suggest that a strong middle class increased the adoption lags and penetration rates in Western countries. Therefore, it may account for some of the convergence of adoption lags and divergence of penetration rates between the two country groups.
Addressing the big questions about how technological change is transforming economies and societies Rapid technological change—likely to accelerate as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic—is reshaping economies and how they grow. But change also causes disruption, creates winners and losers, and produces social stress. This book examines the challenges of digital transformation and suggests how creative policies can make it more productive and inclusive. Shifting Paradigms is the second book on technological change produced by a joint research project of the Brookings Institution and the Korea Development Institute. Contributors are experts from the United States, Europe, and Korea. The first volume, Growth in a Time of Change, was published by Brookings in February 2020. The book's underlying thesis is that the future is arriving faster than expected. Long-accepted paradigms about economic growth are changing as digital technologies transform markets and nearly every aspect of business and work. Change will only intensify with advances in artificial intelligence and other innovations. Investors, business leaders, workers, and public officials face many questions. Is rising market concentration inevitable with the new technologies or can their benefits be more widely shared? How can the promise of FinTech be captured while managing risks? Should workers fear the new automation? Are technology-driven shifts in business and work causing income inequality to rise? How should public policy respond? Shifting Paradigms addresses these questions in an engaging manner for anyone interested in understanding how the economic and social agenda is being transformed by today's winds of change.