EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Competing engines of growth: innovation and standardization

Daron Acemoglu, Gino Gancia and Fabrizio Zilibotti

No 483, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: We study a dynamic general equilibrium model where innovation takes the form of the introduction new goods, whose production requires skilled workers. Innovation is followed by a costly process of standardization, whereby these new goods are adapted to be produced using unskilled labor. Our framework highlights a number of novel results. First, standardization is both an engine of growth and a potential barrier to it. As a result, growth in an inverse U-shaped function of the standardization rate (and of competition). Second, we characterize the growth and welfare maximizing speed of standardization. We show how optimal IPR policies affecting the cost of standardization vary with the skill-endowment, the elasticity of substitution between goods and other parameters. Third, we show that the interplay between innovation and standardization may lead to multiple equilibria. Finally, we study the implications of our model for the skill-premium and we illustrate novel reasons for linking North-South trade to intellectual property rights protection.

Keywords: Growth; technology adoption; competition policy; intellectual property rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F43 O31 O33 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-mic
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/51742/1/iewwp483.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Competing engines of growth: Innovation and standardization (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Competing Engines of Growth: Innovation and Standardization (2010) Downloads
Working Paper: Competing Engines of Growth: Innovation and Standardization (2010) Downloads
Working Paper: Competing engines of growth: Innovation and standardization (2010) Downloads
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:zur:iewwpx:483

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().

 
Page updated 2025-01-07
Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:483