Technology adoption, innovation, and inequality in a global world

Working paper

I develop a tractable semi-endogenous multi-country growth model with a technology adoption margin. Innovation and adoption are skill-intensive activities, and a tradeoff arises whether skilled labor is used to push out the technological frontier or to adopt existing technology. I use the theory to revisit the effect of market integration on growth among asymmetric countries with large differences in innovative capacity. Transitional dynamics and long-run effects implied by the model differ substantially from benchmark endogenous growth models and jointly explain stellar per capita growth in emerging markets and the disappointing growth performance of advanced economies after rising global market integration since the 1990s.

Authors: Trouvain, F

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Place of publication: Oxford, UK
• Publication date: 2025-08-19
• Paper number: 1102
• Language: English