| This dissertation addresses empirical issues on technology externalities. The first chapter analyzes how a plant's probability of adopting a new technology depends on the presence of prior adopters by exploiting a proprietary panel data set that reports the adoption of 22 advanced manufacturing technologies by 1,902 Canadian plants. The results indicate that technology adoption is facilitated by the presence of prior adopters with four characteristics: They are adopters of the same technology, similar to the potential adopter in the input side, dissimilar to the potential adopter in the product market, and reside in the same region. The findings strongly suggest that agglomeration in the adoption of new technologies is driven by knowledge spillovers.; The second chapter analyzes household gasoline demand in Canada. While recent studies (Hausman and Newey (1995, 1998) and Schmalensee and Stoker (1999)) focus respectively on price and demographic effects in analyzing U.S. household demand for gasoline, this paper estimates a semiparametric model of household gasoline demand in Canada using simple differencing techniques. This paper finds that price elasticity is close to that found by Hausman and Newey (1995, 1998), the income elasticity lies between that found by Hausman and Newey (1995, 1998) and Schmalensee and Stoker (1999), and that price and demographic variables are essentially orthogonal. Further, it finds that there is no evidence of endogeneity of the price of gasoline.; The third chapter analyzes how cross-country differences in production structure, productivity of R&D investment and absorptive capacity affect the scope and magnitude of international R&D spillovers on productivity. The study is based on the industry-level data set that covers 10 OECD countries from 1973 to 1995. It finds that accounting for cross-country difference in each of production structure (using country-specific input-output tables) and productivity of R&D investment (using patents granted per scientist) yields significantly different spillover effects than previous studies. This suggests that the effect of international R&D spillovers depends on both production structure and the pattern of international trade. Further, it finds the absorptive capacity of a country is positively related to spillovers. |
