Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past few centuries, but much of that progress is still limited to the richest countries. Why don't new technologies spread quickly throughout the world, benefiting billions of people? In this podcast, we’ll focus on one particular answer: new technologies improve productivity, but they improve productivity more when paired with knowledge on how to use them. If this is true, new technologies will be less beneficial to recipients who don’t have the knowledge to use them effectively - and thus, they may not spread as much as we expected.

This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial draft) of Training enhances the value of new technology, published on New Things Under the Sun. This is a collaboration with Karthik Tadepalli, an economics PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. See here for more on New Things Under the Sun's collaboration policy.

Articles mentioned
Comin, Diego, and Martí Mestieri. 2014. Technology Diffusion: Measurement, Causes and Consequences. In Handbook of Economic Growth, Vol. 2, eds. Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf. Elsevier. 565-622. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53540-5.00002-1

Verhoogen, Eric. 2023. Firm-Level Upgrading in Developing Countries. Journal of Economic Literature 61(4): 1410-64. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20221633

Giorcelli, Michela. 2019. The Long-Term Effect of Management and Technology Transfers. American Economic Review109(1): 121-152. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20170619

Giorcelli, Michela, and Bo Li. 2023. Technology Transfer and Early Industrial Development: Evidence from the Sino-Soviet Alliance. SSRN Working Paper. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3758314