Essays on technology diffusion, trade, and productivity (China, India)

This thesis consists of three essays on technology diffusion, trade, and productivity. The first essay develops a simple empirical framework to analyze the significance of Research and Development (R&D) spillovers through trade in goods on productivity growth in a panel of twelve manufacturing industries across ten DECD countries during 1973--1994. Four types of R&D effects on productivity growth are identified: R&D effects from the domestic industry itself, R&D spillovers from the same industries in other countries, R&D spillovers from other domestic industries, and R&D spillovers from other foreign industries. The relative contributions of these sources to average productivity growth are found to be about 20% from domestic industry itself, 50--70% from other domestic industries, and 10--30% from the industries in other countries, most of which comes from the same industries in other countries.; The second essay investigates productivity trends in India's manufacturing sectors during the 1980s and 1990s in a comparative context. It is found that (i) labor and total factor productivity trends in most of the sectors since 1980 have been remarkably higher than those in pre 1980, (ii) the productivity growth rates of the sectors are similar with those in China and are significantly higher than those in the US and DECD, (iii) although technology diffusion is found to be an important source for this productivity performance, data indicates that the role of imports as a conduit of technology spillover is not significant.; The third essay examines the pattern and impact of ownership restructuring in both state owned and collective enterprises in China using data from 155 enterprises covering the years 1994 to 2001. Two main results are found. First, among state owned enterprises the enterprises that performed worse before reform were more likely to be privatized, while among collective enterprises there is no clear selection pattern between pre-reform performance and the likelihood of privatization. Second, while privatization has a strong positive effect on economic performance of the reformed state owned enterprises, evidence that it has a strong positive effect on collective enterprises is weak.