Distance to the Pre-industrial Technological Frontier and Economic Development

Ömer Özak

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This research explores the effects of the geographical distance to the pre-industrial technological frontier on economic development. It establishes theoretically and empirically that there exists a persistent non-monotonic effect of distance to the frontier on development. In particular, exploiting a novel measure of the travel time to the technological frontier and variations in its location during the pre-industrial era, it establishes a robust persistent U-shaped relation between the distance to the pre-industrial technological frontier and economic development. Moreover, it demonstrates that isolation from the frontier has had a positive cumulative effect on innovation and entrepreneurial activity levels, suggesting isolation may have fostered the emergence of a culture conducive to innovation, knowledge creation, and entrepreneurship.

Keywords: E02; F15; F43; N10; N70; O11; O14; O31; O33; Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E02 F15 F43 N10 O10 O11 O14 O25 O31 O33 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/74737/1/MPRA_paper_74737.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/84892/1/MPRA_paper_84892.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Distance to the pre-industrial technological frontier and economic development (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:74737

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