Abstract:

In this dissertation, I ask if globalization has permitted developing countries to close the technology gaps that separate them from advanced economies. Technology is widely held to be a fundamental driver of development at national and subnational scales, and features prominently in contemporary theories of economic geography and growth. At the same time, technology is hard to measure, because it is unobserved in the economy. As a result, we have little empirical sense of the uneven geography of technological sophistication, and how it has changed. I construct a novel index of technology that ranks national economies according to the sophistication of the goods they export. I use my index to test whether international technology gaps have diminished between 1972 and 2001. I also investigate the determinants of technological upgrading by probing the relationship between technology and institutions that build agents capacity to absorb new ideas. Among the major findings, I conclude that a large technology gap separates the most and least advanced economies, and it has grown over the recent period of globalization. That is, developed economies have seen their positions reinforced, not eroded by the incipient rise of new powers in the global economy. I also find that trade and foreign investment do not stimulate technological upgrading, regardless of a country's level of absorptive capacity.