Book,
Insights from book translations on the international diffusion of knowledge
Stanford University, Stanford, (2011)
Abstract
Increases in the stock of ideas possessed by societies are central to modern economic growth. The implications of idea ows are striking: Klenow and Rodrguez-Clare (2005) estimate world production would be just 6\% of its current level if countries did not share ideas. Yet, although theoretical economists have studied ideas and their di usion extensively, empirical studies are scarce because ideas are inherently dicult to measure. Previous empirical studies of idea ows have tended to use proxies such as trade ows, foreign direct investment, migration, and patent citations. However, with the exception of the latter, these measures are not pure idea ows, and do not capture the key properties of ideas, namely non-rivalry and disembodiedness. My research proposes a novel measure of idea ows, namely book translations,and uses it to study the factors that a ect the international di usion of ideas. Book translations are an attractive way to quantify idea ows because they are both non-rival and disembodied; they are a pure measure of idea ows rather than a by-product of a process such as trade or migration, and their key purpose is to make the ideas contained in the book accessible to speakers of another language
