Education, technology adoption and productivity

This paper explores the causes of economic disparities across countries in a vintage-capital model that endogenizes education and technology adoption decisions. The implications of differences in the costs of adopting new technologies and in the quality of schools for differences in income per capita and educational attainment are examined. If, as some evidence on human capital indicates, the main role of education consists of improving the ability to learn to operate new technologies, the analysis suggests that differences in the costs of adopting new technologies can be a primary source of cross-country disparities. On its part, differences in the quality of schools cannot be a fundamental cause of these disparities