Technology, mobile capital, and strategic policies: A dynamic global capital market equilibrium study

摘要

Technology, capital, and labor productivity play important roles in economic growth. The combination of mobile capital, technology transfer, and immobile labor creates a complex environment for national economic and technology policy making. This dissertation models the dynamic process of technology innovation, technology transfer, and their interaction with the formation and flows of other economic factors to study the issues of strategic economic and technology policies. Perfectly mobile capital and immobile labor are assumed in the policy studies.;The main focus of this study is the modeling of technology and its interaction with other economic factors. Two types of technologies are modeled: product technology which creates new consumer products, and process technology which improves efficiency of production processes. The former creates monopolistic rents which directly enhance a nation's GNP and capital formation. The latter generates higher productivity which indirectly improves GNP and capital formation.;Similar to strategic trade theorists' studies (Krugman, Helpman, et al.), this study allows the existence and continuous creation of monopolistic rents and differential wage rates through continuous innovation of product and process technology. However, this study assumes free and fair trade of goods and focuses on the flow and creation of technology and factor endowments. It studies the important structural changes of factor endowments due to technology innovation, technology transfer, productivity growth, capital formation, and capital flows among nations. Full employment is assumed throughout the study. The study shows that free flows of capital and technology are beneficial to all nations except under a few extreme situations. The study shows that developed and less-developed nations alike can manage their future comparative advantages through domestic strategic economic and technology policies without interfering with global efficiency. Nevertheless, by distinguishing product technology from process technology, this study generates some results that differ from those of the strategic trade theorists. This study shows that product and process technology have different impacts on factor flows. With an immobile labor market and a mobile capital market, nations must have coordinated economic and technology policies to ensure both global efficiency and the welfare of domestic labor.