| The transfer of technology from developed to less developed countries is often treated as an exogenous and costless byproduct of technological change. This dissertation provides theoretical and empirical evidence that the extent of technology transfer will be a choice variable, affected by the research policies of the country originating the technology and of the country wishing to import the technology. Both the source country and the importing country can increase the transferability of new technology, but this increase in adaptability requires an explicit expenditure of resources. Models are presented in which the level of technology transfer is determined endogenously under various maximization criteria. The solutions which emerge from cooperation between the two regions are shown to be superior to the noncooperative solution. To determine whether the potential for increasing adaptability is of significant proportions the tradeoff between the improvement of wheat technology by the Mexican instituted International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center for Mexico and foreign countries is estimated. As suggested by the theoretical analysis, small improvements in adaptability to foreign conditions do not entail much reduction in domestic productivity, but larger improvements require disproportionately higher sacrifices of domestic productivity. The policy implications of these results are discussed. |
