珞珈青年学者经济与管理论坛系列论文之十一【荐】.pdfVIP

珞珈青年学者经济与管理论坛 系列论文之十一 Luojia Young Scholars Seminar on Economics and Management Working Paper No.11 Politics, Technological Choice and Economic Development Justin Yifu Liny Shiyuan Panz Abstract We construct a model to investigate the impact of politcs on technology choice and convergence. Political elites would adopt inappropriate tech- nology (overly inferior or superior technology) because of a political re- placement e§ect. Under some circumstances, the elite are willing to adopt inferior technology, and blocking development will more likely arise when political rents are higher and external threats are weak. In other circum- stance, they would adopt overly superior technology, and higher rents and severer external threats may hurt development. Technological choice deter- mines absorptive capability, thus economic growth rate. So if developing countries adopt appropriate technology, then they converge at least part way toward developed countries because of cheaper adoption costs. On the contrary, if they adopt too advanced, inappropriate technology, then they may lag behind developed countries because exsisting technology knowl- edge is not conducive to absorb overly advanced knowledge. We argue that this model provides an interpretation for the case in Acemoglu and Robinson (2006), as well as why most of developing countries donít catch up toward developed countries after World War II. Key Words: Political Replacement E§ect, Technology AdOption, Con- vergence JEL ClassiÖcation: H2, N10, N40, O1, O3, O4 We are grateful to t