International spillovers in a world of technology clubs

Abstract

The technology club literature suggests a tripartite segmentation of countries into an innovation, an imitation and a stagnation club. We use a Benhabib–Spiegel type growth model embedded in a threshold regression framework to test for non-linearities in the impact of the technology gap on economic growth as suggested by the technology club hypothesis. Using human capital as the threshold variable we are able to identify three country groupings. In line with the technology club hypothesis we find the strongest effects of the technology gap on economic growth in the intermediate group which we associate with the imitation club.