Publications by Author: Comin, Diego

2010

In the aftermath of World War II, the world's economies exhibited very different rates of economic recovery. We provide evidence that those countries that caught up the most with the US in the postwar period are those that also saw an acceleration in the speed of adoption of new technologies. This acceleration is correlated with the incidence of US economic aid and technical assistance in the same period. We interpret this as supportive of the interpretation that technology transfers from the US to Western European countries and Japan were an important factor in driving growth in these recipient countries during the postwar decades.

11-027.pdf

Harvard Business School Working Paper No.11-027, June 2010

2006
Aghion, Philippe, Diego Comin, and Peter Howitt. 2006. “When Does Domestic Saving Matter for Economic Growth?”. Abstract

Can a country grow faster by saving more? We address this question both theoretically and empirically. In our model, growth results from innovations that allow local sectors to catch up with the frontier technology. In relatively poor countries, catching up with the frontier requires the involvement of a foreign investor, who is familiar with the frontier technology, together with effort on the part of a local bank, who can directly monitor local projects to which the technology must be adapted. In such a country, local saving matters for innovation, and therefore growth, because it allows the domestic bank to cofinance projects and thus to attract foreign investment. But in countries close to the frontier, local firms are familiar with the frontier technology, and therefore do not need to attract foreign investment to undertake an innovation project, so local saving does not matter for growth. In our empirical exploration we show that lagged savings is significantly associated with productivity growth for poor but not for rich countries. This effect operates entirely through TFP rather than through capital accumulation. Further, we show that savings is significantly associated with higher levels of FDI inflows and equipment imports and that the effect that these have on growth is significantly larger for poor countries than rich.

2007_7_aghion.pdf

WCFIA Working Paper 07-07, August 2006