We study the problem of spreading a particular behavior among agents located in a random social network. In each period of time, neighboring agents interact strategically playing a 2 × 2 coordination game. Assuming a myopic-best response dynamics, we show that there exists a threshold for the degree of risk dominance of an action such that below that threshold, contagion of the action occurs. T...

This paper begins with a discussion of the role played by upgrading in the promotion of sustainable growth. Upgrading is discussed in two different contexts, that of industrial clusters and that of global value chains (GVCs). Drawing on global and African experiences, the paper addresses the upgrading agenda required to enable dynamic clusters to meet both domestic needs and progressively also ...

Where and why do new industries emerge? Using revisions of official industrial classifications, a central contribution of this paper is to document the fraction of workers in entirely new industries, stemming directly from technological change of the 2000s. Our findings speak to a growing concern about the U.S. economy’s capacity to create new work: we show that in 2010 only 0.5 percent of the ...

Do international trade and technological change influence how firms create incentives for human capital? I present a model that incorporates agency problems into a framework with firm heterogeneity and human capital. My model indicates that trade liberalizations and skill-biased technological change alter the way how the largest firms in an economy incentivize their managers. Increases in manag...

abstract nowadays information plays an important role in the development process of societies so that the usage of related technologies such as ict can speed up this process by preparing cheap and effective instruments and changing working and living styles. the aim of this paper is to investigate the main determinants of information and communication technology (ict) adoption in 18 selected as...

Innovation processes within corporations increasingly tap into international technology sources, yet little is known about the relative contribution of different types of innovation channels. We investigate the effectiveness of different types of international technology sourcing activities using survey information on German companies complemented with information from the European Patent Offic...

This paper examines the impact of being an innovator on firm productivity in Taiwan. Using a panel of 48794 firms observed over the 1997-2003 period, and distributed across 23 industries, we compute TFP by estimating Translog production functions with conventional K, L, E, M inputs. We evaluate the impact of being an innovator on TFP using propensity score matching. The rationale is that, over ...

This paper proposes three models of social capital and growth that incorporate different perspectives on the concept of social capital and the empirical evidence gathered to date. In these models, social capital impacts growth by assisting in the accumulation of human capital, by affecting financial development through its effects on collective trust and social norms, and by facilitating networ...

The Demand for Labor: An Analysis Using Matched EmployerEmployee Data from the German LIAB. Will the High Unskilled Worker Own-Wage Elasticity Please Stand Up? This paper uses matched employee-employer LIAB data to provide panel estimates of the structure of labor demand in Germany, 1993-2002, distinguishing between highly skilled, skilled, and unskilled labor and between the manufacturing and ...

This paper looks at the convergence clubs literature from a Schumpeterian perspective, and it follows the idea that cross-country differences in the ability to innovate and to imitate foreign technologies determine the existence of clustering, polarization and convergence clubs. The study investigates the characteristics of different technology clubs and the growth trajectories that they have f...