The Role of International Technology Spillovers in the Economic Growth of the OECD Countries

This paper explores the role of imports as a mechanism of transmission of international technology spillovers and its significance for the growth of the OECD countries. For this purpose we estimate a version of the growth model proposed by Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), which includes two main modifications in order to better specify the nature of international knowledge diffusion. The first is the inclusion of the R&D capital stock into this framework. The second consist of using a direct measurement of international technology spillovers instead of using per capita GDP gap in respect to the leader country as approach to it. Our results reveal that international technology spillovers transmitted through imports have had a favourable influence on the economic growth of the OECD countries. However, they show the predominant role of the domestic human and R&D capital endowments in economic growth.