5. Concluding remarks
The model we present above is a fairly general one and nests several models within it as special cases, allowing for a unified framework of growth and technology adoption. Our focus, however, is on the appropriate technology notion initially developed in Atkinson and Stiglitz (1969) and more recently in Basu and Weil (1999). This paper examines this notion as a potential candidate for explaining the diversity of growth and technology diffusion experiences of world economies, and for uneven development patterns within countries. We find that the appropriate technology concept is indeed worthy of further exploration given the richness of outcomes nested within the framework discussed above. Depending on initial conditions, there is the possibility of poverty traps and dual economies even in cases where the potentially more productive technology has been fully adopted in the economy. Furthermore, the model can explain situations where productivity differences arise across countries even in the case the same technology has been adopted across countries. Another interesting aspect of the model is that the nature of growth can be “balanced” or “unbalanced”. This suggests that empirical work examining the diffusion of adopted technologies in the context of local conditions of development and skill depth is a fruitful area of research.
The model also highlights some dimensions along which political economy issues come into play, and have a bearing on the interdisciplinary literature surrounding the “appropriate technology movement” initiated by the work of Schumacher (1975). Specifically, while the model does not explicitly model politico-economic influences, it provides an indirect rationale for the emergence of resistance to more advanced technologies that involve higher returns to scale. In the context of our model such a resistance might occur in cases where adverse outcomes occur even when the potentially better technology has been adopted.
