The Technology Gap with Developing Countries: Eric Verhoogen Researches Industrial Development
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2020
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
Tying the importance of economics to technological innovation is key to advancing developing countries. Eric Verhoogen's research asks why firms in industrial countries aren't adopting technologies already developed by richer countries. He tells listeners about some microeconomics concepts his research explores.
For example, he explains
- How a variety of incentives within a company can inhibit adopting a new technology,
- How understanding and eradicating organizational barriers to concepts like profit sharing could lift such barriers, and
- Why connecting microeconomics concepts with effective government intervention is essential in approaching pay-for-performance export incentives.
Eric Verhoogen is a professor in the Department of Economics and School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He researches the importance of economics in adopting new technologies by examining organizational barriers to these technologies. He explains this research by telling listeners about a specific example involving the introduction of a less wasteful technology into soccer ball production in several Pakistani firms.
He describes his particular research experiment that resulted in pinpointing the barrier to implementing this technology on workers who would lose money in their per-piece system. He discusses why this was the case and what was different about one firm that chose to take on this technology and why that was significant.
His example relays other barriers to taking on new technology such as owners unwilling to undergo too much organizational reworking as well as the mysteries behind the lack of much "knowledge spill over." Such research opens up keys to ways government could effectively intervene in terms of tariff reduction and trade organizations.
He also discusses his other research projects such as incentivizing surgical goods innovation through a contest and a project in Tunisia on pay-for-performance export production and subsidies.
To find out more, see his Columbia website, columbia.edu/~ev2124/, and find him on Twitter as @EricVerhoogen.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Forget frequently asked questions common sense common knowledge or Google how about advice from a real genius |
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| 0:18.3 | Richard Jacobs has made it his life's mission to find them for you. He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every field, sleep science, cancer, stem cells, |
| 0:27.2 | ketogenic diets, and more. |
| 0:28.8 | Here come the geniuses. |
| 0:30.4 | This is the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:33.0 | That are Richard Jacobs. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:41.0 | I have Eric Berugin. |
| 0:43.4 | He's a Columbia professor of the Department of Economics and School of International and Public Affairs. |
| 0:49.0 | And we're going to talk about his research area of industrial development and microeconomic research on firms in developing countries. |
| 0:57.0 | So, Eric, thanks for coming. How you doing today? |
| 0:59.0 | Very good. Thanks. Thanks for having. |
| 1:01.0 | Yeah, if you would, tell me about your research in your own words, |
| 1:04.0 | what are you looking at currently? |
| 1:06.5 | Yeah, so the big question is, |
| 1:08.8 | why are firms in developing countries |
| 1:11.6 | often not able to adopt technologies that have already been developed in richer countries. |
| 1:17.0 | And by technologies or products or ways of doing business that firms in rich countries have often you |
| 1:24.3 | figured out how to do already but the firms develop the countries for some |
| 1:27.3 | reason seem to have trouble you know adopting them so we can think about lots of |
| 1:31.6 | different reasons for that. |
... |
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