Measuring the Diffusion of Technologies Through International Trade

Joshua D. Hall ()
Additional contact information
Joshua D. Hall: Florida Southern College

International Advances in Economic Research, 2019, vol. 25, issue 4, No 6, 445-459

Abstract: Abstract Technological advancements affect economic growth, income distribution and levels of unemployment. However, quantifying the pace of technological diffusion is problematic. This paper develops a new measure of technological progress by estimating the high-skill content of imports using industry-level, bilateral trade data. Intuitively, during periods of trade liberalization, a higher skill content embodied within imports will lead to a faster change in the arrival rate of new technologies. Trade accelerated since the 1980s and with that came a diffusion of new technologies into developing countries. By utilizing the industry-level trade data in conjunction with the high-skill factor content of each industry, a measure of technological diffusion is developed using a theoretically consistent gravity model. This measure is highly correlated with other measures of technological progress and provides a new data set for a large number of both developed and developing countries. How the high-skill content of imports increased is analyzed for countries across the development spectrum. This measure of technological progress is applied to income inequality. It significantly increases inequality, consistent with theoretical expectations, and provides an additional avenue in how to measure technological progress.

Keywords: Technological diffusion; Gravity model; Skill-biased technological change; Income inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F01 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11294-019-09759-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:iaecre:v:25:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11294-019-09759-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11294

DOI: 10.1007/s11294-019-09759-y

Access Statistics for this article

International Advances in Economic Research is currently edited by Katherine S. Virgo

More articles in International Advances in Economic Research from Springer, International Atlantic Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().