Essays in international trade, technology diffusion, and growth

This dissertation consists of three essays on the interrelationships between international trade, international technology diffusion, and economic growth.; The first essay is "Distance, International Trade, and International Knowledge Diffusion." It examines the determinants of international knowledge diffusion. Specifically, it estimates the effects of geographic, cultural, and institutional distance, and it investigates why these barriers matter. I decompose each distance effect into a direct component and an indirect component that is mediated by bilateral imports, using a proxy for transportation costs as an instrument for imports. The estimates indicate that common language and colonial links increase knowledge flows, and that these effects are largely independent of trade. In contrast, international trade may be an important channel for the positive effects of geographic proximity and common legal origin on cross-country knowledge diffusion.; In Chapter 2, entitled "Skilled Migration, Knowledge Diffusion, and Growth", I analyze the effects of migration of skilled labor from developing countries to developed countries. I develop a two-country innovator-imitator model in which skilled labor is the primary input for the creation and absorption of new technologies. The model predicts that skilled migration raises the long-run growth rate of all economies, but it temporarily depresses the growth of the developing world. Numerical simulations indicate that the positive and negative effects on growth can be substantial and that the negative effect on the growth of the developing world can be quite persistent.; In Chapter 3, "When Do Multinational Firms Outsource?", Catherine Thomas and I test the empirical relevance of two models of the multinational firm's outsourcing choices: the Antras and Helpman (2004) property rights model and the Grossman and Helpman (2004) managerial incentives model. We adapt these theories to the hotel industry and generate contrasting implications for the relationship between the size of a hotel property and the likelihood that it is owned or operated by a third party. We test these implications using a new dataset containing the organizational form, location, and size of more than 4000 hotel properties that operate under 15 different brands in 103 countries. The results suggest that agency problems are an important influence on the organizational choices of multinational firms.