The Division of Labour, Worker Organisation, and Technological Change The model developed in this paper explains differences in the division of labour across firms as a result of computer technology adoption. We find that changes in the division of labour can result both from reduced production time and from improved communication possibilities. The first shifts the division of labour towards a...

New products and practices take time to diffuse, a fact that is often attributed to some form of heterogeneity among potential adopters. People may realize different benefits and costs from the innovation, or have different beliefs about its benefits and costs, hear about it at different times, or delay in acting on their information. This paper analyzes the dynamics arising from different sour...

This paper extends the literature on technology adoption by introducing a distinction between technological breakthroughs (‘innovations’) and the engineering re/nements (‘improvements’) that follow such a breakthrough. Firms do not necessarily wait for a future technological breakthrough, but instead have an incentive to delay the adoption of a new technology until it is su2ciently advanced. We...

Using 1985–1999 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) to analyze wages we confirm the hypothesis that existing computer wage premiums are determined by individual ability or other unobserved individual characteristics rather than by productivity effects. While a rather large personal computer (PC) wage premium was found in the crosssectional regressions even after the inclusio...

This paper discusses the occurrence of skill-enhancing technology import, namely the relationship between imports of embodied technology and widening skill-based employment di¤erentials in low and middle-income countries. GMM techniques are applied to an original panel dataset comprising 28 manufacturing sectors for 23 countries over a decade. Econometric results provide robust evidence of the ...

The paper investigates the situation of middle-income economies around the world. Since 1965, only 18 economies with a population of more than 3 million and not dependent on oil exports have made the transition to being high income. Many more have not been able to move beyond the middle-income stage. We conduct statistical tests of differences between two groups of economies across a range of g...

Drawing on the stylized facts and evidences, in a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, this paper examines the impact on TFP of North–South, North–North trade-related triangular R&D spillovers. By constructing different technology appropriation parameters based on embodied and disembodied R&D, absorption and learning effects, it shows: (i) North–South R&D flows have a positive impact on ...

This paper introduces service innovation in the proximity-concentration trade-off model of trade and FDI (Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple, 2004). The idea is that innovation will have two main effects on service firms’ choice between exports and FDI. First, innovative firms will on average have higher productivity levels than non-innovative enterprises. Secondly, innovators will have to pay a higher...

For some time there has been an increase in adoption of enterprise systems by small companies. With welldocumented potential benefits, there are a lot of reasons to adopt them. In this study however the choice to adopt smaller pieces of information systems by a small organization is investigated to provide a counter example to the integrated-solution literature. With the intention to adopt an e...

Globalization, high growth rates in high-tech industries, growing emerging markets and harmonization of patent institutions across countries have stimulated patenting in foreign markets. We use a simple model of international patenting, where the decision to patent in a foreign country depends on country characteristics and the quality of the patented invention. With access to a detailed databa...