There is general agreement that technology transfer constitutes a key determinant of increased labour productivity, and thus of economic growth. Furthermore, technology transfer to developing countries is often portrayed by policymakers as an efficient way to address environmental issues, climate change in particular. It has been enshrined as a way to promote sustainable development in a series of international mechanisms and treaties such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. However, in their new article “Will Technological Change Save the World? The Rebound Effect in International Transfers of Technology”, published in Environmental and Resource Economics, Tim Swanson, Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, and Mare Sarr show that a simple handoff of technology may be ineffective or even counterproductive in environmental terms in the absence of accompanying measures such as institutional development. Professor Swanson provides more details on the article, the research project behind it and the use of coauthorship in international economics.

What policy measures would you recommend to improve the efficiency of technology transfer mechanism?

The point of our paper is that technology alone will solve nothing. There must be incentives for users of technology to use it in a particular way. If it is given or devised by countries with the goal of reducing energy consumption while the countries receiving it have the goal of increasing consumption, then the only impact that transferring the technology might achieve is enabling the recipient to use more energy sooner rather than later. This implies that the important thing is to transfer the objective of the first country, together with the technology. This may be achieved in a myriad of different ways, but in general it implies providing a path to development for the countries concerned.

It seems that developing countries cannot improve their environmental policies unless they first reach a necessary level of development/satiation. Is this a fatality?

It is fatal to think that technological change, in and of itself, solves anything. A solution to climate change is likely to mean that an equal level of development will have to be achievable by the developing countries, and there are bargains that can be made to render it cheaper and easier to develop for countries relying less upon carbon-based technologies. But it is these bargains that are the essence of the policies required to halt global warming, not the alternative technologies. In the end, a question such as global warming is one about aiding development, not so much about creating technologies.

Can you tell us about CostAccess, the broader project behind this article?

Mare Sarr, my colleague at the University of Cape Town, and I filed this proposal as a means of providing a developing country perspective within our Sinergia project on Innovation, Diffusion and Green Growth. The Sinergia project was based around European institutions, and it seemed important for us to include at least one developing country partner within the project so that these other facets of the issue could be introduced and explored. As I have indicated above, we believe there is no solution to the problem of climate change without the conclusion of a fundamental bargain between the developed and developing parts of the world. Mare and I used the CostAssess funds, first, to work together on this paper (with his stay in Geneva and mine in Cape Town); second, to conduct field research in South Africa on the costs to coal miners from shutting down South African coal exports (which go mainly to the European Union at present); and, third, to conduct a global experiment on the perceived fairness of various “global bargains” that might be considered as possible bases for solving this problem.

You have written the article with Mare Sarr. Why is coauthorship so popular in international economics?

Much of economic analysis is a fairly lengthy process of digging deeper and deeper for fundamental explanations. For this reason, it is not easy (or at least I do not find it easy) to pursue a problem alone. It is important to dig into a problem as deeply as possible, and then run your thinking by another person, who quickly points out to you the steps you missed and the further layers of the problem remaining. Economics provides a framework for thinking about a problem, but it is colleagues in economics who make it possible for you to push your thinking further.

This is an explanation for the process that resulted in our paper – lots of discussions and debate. It could not have been done alone (unless you are good at talking to yourself). In other cases, coauthorship can become a “cast of thousands” because of the various stages involved in the work. I am one of six coauthors of a current paper that has taken nearly a decade to complete: two wrote the survey and gathered the data in the Gola Forest; two did the initial data analysis and institutional research about Sierra Leone’s legal framework; and two did the final modelling of the problem and write-up. It is standard practice (and seems fair) that in economics we give each significant contributor to the existence of a paper the status of coauthor, rather than simply listing early participants in the acknowledgements.

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Full citation of the article: Sarr, Mare, and Tim Swanson. “Will Technological Change Save the World? The Rebound Effect in International Transfers of Technology.” Environmental and Resource Economics 66, no. 3 (2017): 577–604. doi:10.1007/s10640-016-0093-4.