Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/122154 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
KIT Working Paper Series in Economics No. 74
Publisher: 
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre (ECON), Karlsruhe
Abstract: 
This paper assesses the robustness of the empirical results in Ertur and Koch (2007), who develop a model, which accounts for technological interdependence among countries through spatial externalities. The original version models interdependence via an interaction matrix based on geographic distance. In contrast, in this paper, data on genetic distance, defined as the time since two populations have shared a common ancestor, from Spolaore and Wacziarg (2009) is used to construct the interaction matrix. It is found that, whereas in the original model indirect spillovers from capital investment were insignificant, using genetic distance, these spillovers now have a significant effect on steady-state income per worker. However, the version of the model with an interaction matrix based on genetic distance implies an implausibly large capital share of income. In addition, the model is subjected to a further series of robustness checks. The original version relies on data from Penn World Table (PWT) Version 6.1. More recent versions are currently available, and the data has been extensively revised (Johnson et al., 2013). It is shown that results are in general not robust across different versions of the PWT. Furthermore, the estimation results are highly sensitive both to the measure used to model interaction between countries (genetic or geographic distance) and to the specific functional form on which the weights in the interaction matrix are based.
Subjects: 
knowledge spillovers
genetic distance
spatial externalities
technological interdependence
JEL: 
O47
C31
C52
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.