Contracts and Technology Adoption

Contracts and Technology Adoption

We develop a tractable framework for the analysis of the relationship between contractual incompleteness, technological complementarities, and technology adoption. In our model a …rm chooses its technology and investment levels in contractible activities by suppliers of intermediate inputs. Suppliers then choose investments in noncontractible activities, anticipating payo¤s from an ex post barg...

Strategic Technology Adoption under Technological Uncertainty

Technology Adoption and Growth Dynamics

We study the lags with which new technologies are adopted across countries, and their penetration rates once they are adopted. Using data from the last two centuries, we estimate both the extensive and the intensive margins of technology adoption. We document two new facts: there has been convergence in adoption lags between rich and poor countries, while there has been divergence in penetratio...

Technology Adoption and Trade Policies

We examine in a dyanmic model how a firm determines the optimal level of innovation, and how a firm chooses between innovation and imitation. This paper considers a local firm, which is competing with a foreign, more productive, firm in terms of quantity, and at the same time, the local firm is able to spend the optimal amount of resources on innovation, with the purpose of closing the technolo...

Adoption of New Technology

The contribution of new technology to economic growth can only be realized when and if the new technology is widely diffused and used. Diffusion itself results from a series of individual decisions to begin using the new technology, decisions which are often the result of a comparison of the uncertain benefits of the new invention with the uncertain costs of adopting it. An understanding of the...