2. This challenge goes beyond having more big firms (Ciani et al. 2020), given that large firms in developing countries are also significantly behind the technology frontier. 3. Network effects occur when the value of a technology, such as computers or automated teller machines (ATMs), increases the more users it has. Network effects are often accompanied by a production scale effect that reduces the cost of the technology.
References Aghion, P., and P. Howitt. 1992. “A Model of Growth through Creative Destruction.” Econometrica 60 (2): 323–51. Akcigit, U., and S. T. Ates. 2019. “What Happened to U.S. Business Dynamism?” NBER Working Paper 25756, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Andrews, D., C. Criscuolo, and P. N. Gal. 2016. “The Best versus the Rest: The Global Productivity Slowdown, Divergence across Firms and the Role of Public Policy.” OECD Productivity Working Paper 5, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Bloom, N., E. Brynjolfsson, L. Foster, R. Jarmin, M. Patnaik, I. Saporta-Eksten, and J. Van Reenen. 2019. “What Drives Differences in Management Practices?” American Economic Review 109 (5): 1648–83. Bloom, N., and J. Van Reenen. 2007. “Measuring and Explaining Management Practices across Firms and Countries.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (4): 1351–1408. Bresnahan, T. 2010. “General Purpose Technologies.” In Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, Vol. 2, 761–91. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Bresnahan, T. F., and M. Trajtenberg. 1995. “General Purpose Technologies ‘Engines of Growth’?” Journal of Econometrics 65 (1): 83–108. Ciani, A., M. C. Hyland, N. Karalashvili, J. L. Keller, A. Ragoussis, and T. T. Tran. 2020. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms. Washington, DC: World Bank. Cirera, X., D. Comin, M. Cruz, and K. M. Lee. 2020. “Technology within and across Firms.” CEPR Discussion Paper 15427, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC. Comin, D. 2000. “An Uncertainty-Driven Theory of the Productivity Slowdown in Manufacturing.” PhD thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Comin, D., W. Easterly, and E. Gong. 2010. “Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?” NBER Working Paper 12657, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Comin, D., and B. Hobijn. 2004. “Cross-Country Technology Adoption: Making the Theories Face the Facts.” Journal of Monetary Economics 51 (1): 39–83. Comin, D., and M. Mestieri. 2018. “If Technology Has Arrived Everywhere, Why Has Income Diverged?” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 10 (3):137–78. Cusolito, A. P., and W. F. Maloney. 2018. Productivity Revisited: Shifting Paradigms in Analysis and Policy. World Bank Productivity Project series. Washington, DC: World Bank. David, P. A. 1985. “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY.” American Economic Review 75 (2): 332–37. Eurostat. 2000. “Glossary: Business Functions.” Goldfarb, A., and C. Tucker. 2019. “Digital Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 57 (1): 3–43. Gordon, R. J. 2012. “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds.” NBER Working Paper 18315, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Katz, M. L., and C. Shapiro. 1986. “Technology Adoption in the Presence of Network Externalities.” Journal of Political Economy 94 (4): 822–41. Landes, D. S. 2003. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
16
Bridging the Technological Divide
