The Economics of Innovation, Knowledge Diffusion, and Globalization

A recent body of literature on quantitative general equilibrium models links the creation and diffusion of knowledge and technology to openness to international trade and to the activity of multinational firms. The unifying theme of this literature is methodological: productivities are Fréchet random variables and arise from Poisson innovation and diffusion processes for ideas. The main advantage of this modeling strategy is that it delivers closed-form solutions for key endogenous variables that have a direct counterpart in the data (e.g., prices, trade flows). This tractability makes the connection between theory and data transparent, helps clarify the determinants of the gains from openness, and facilitates the calculation of counterfactual equilibria.