The diffusion of modern, efficient technology has far-reaching consequences for the geography of economic activity, inequality and environmental quality. This article examines two popular yet highly controversial claims about the conditions most favorable to the rapid spread of new technology....

Despite their availability to firms across the world, uptake of global voluntary standards has proceeded unevenly across countries over time. In this paper we seek to provide new insights into how geography shapes these spatiotemporal variations, focusing on two leading examples of codified...

This article examines the impact of environmental regulation within countries as well as regulatory distance between countries on international technology transfer. We employ a recently-assembled dataset of automobile emission standards and corresponding data on non-resident patent filing of...

The ‘California effect' hypothesis posits that economic integration may lead to the ratcheting upwards of regulatory standards towards levels found in higher-regulating jurisdictions. Although a number of previous large sample quantitative studies have investigated such convergence dynamics...

Although there is evidence that CO2-efficiency enhancing innovations in one country diffuse into other countries to contribute to the goals of climate change mitigation, very little is known about the conditions under which such international spillovers are most likely to take place. Our...