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Technology Transfer, Welfare, and Wage Inequality

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Review of Development Economics

Published online on

Abstract

We use a linear two‐country, two‐factor, two‐product, two‐different technologies (2×2×2×2) model to study technology transfer and its effects on each country's welfare and factor prices. We demonstrate that technology transfer could benefit both the recipient and the transferring countries. For the recipient country, technology transfer increases the price of the factor that is more intensively used and decreases the price of the other factor. Our results provide an alternative explanation of a trend observed in the past half century: a rise in real wage inequality between relatively skilled workers and less‐skilled workers because of technological progress in numerous countries.