Essays on Technology Choice and Spillovers

Sammanfattning: This thesis consists of three essays on technology choice and spillovers.“Patent Scope and Technology Choice” analyzes the effect of an increase in patent scope on investments in R&D and innovation. It presents a model where a broad scope of the patent on the state-of-the-art technology can induce the entrant firm to do research on an alternative technology. The model predicts that an increase in patent scope can increase the probability of innovation if the incumbent's profit increase from innovating is large and the patented technology has a small advantage over the alternative technology. However, when the model is extended to Stackelberg competition or licensing, the benefit of a broad patent scope to a large extent disappears.“The World Distribution of Productivity: Country TFP Choice in a Nelson-Phelps Economy” builds a theory of the shape of the distribution of total-factor productivity (TFP) across countries. The distribution of productivity across countries is arguably twin-peaked in the data and the proposed theory presents conditions under which twin-peakedness is an equilibrium outcome. The theory combines technology spillovers, modeled as in the Nelson-Phelps specification, and dynamic benefits of TFP accumulation under rational government decision making.“Exhaustible Resources, Technology Choice and Industrialization of Developing Countries” studies technology choice in a dynamic model with two technologies for production; one which uses an exhaustible resource and an alternative technology which does not. The main finding is that if the capital stock is large relative to the resource stock, the alternative technology is immediately adopted and the time path of resource extraction is decreasing. If, instead, the capital stock is small, the alternative technology is adopted with a delay and the time path of extraction is inverse-U shaped.