Importing Technology

Abstract

We look at disaggregated imports of various types of equipment to make inferences on cross-country differences in the composition of equipment investment. We make three contributions. First, we document strikingly large differences in investment composition. Second, we explain these differences as being based on each equipment type's degree of complementarity with other factors whose abundance differs across countries. Third, we show that the composition of capital has the potential to account for some of the large observed differences in TFP across countries.