Author
Mubeen Ahmad* and Alvina Sabah Idrees**
Abstract
The primary focus of this study is to determine whether global economic relationships, political ties, and regional trade agreements significantly affect technology adoption. The comparison is drawn between two groups: the first includes the superpowers and middle regional powers, and the second consists of minor regional powers. Panel data econometric techniques are applied using the fixed effect model based on 26 countries for econometric analysis. Due to the autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity problems, Driscoll-Kraay standard errors were estimated, which are robust to these issues. The study’s empirical results show that a country’s geo-economic relationship and geo-political security have positive and significant impacts on the technological adoption of a country, which is valid for both groups. Moreover, disintegrating the data for further analysis shows mixed impacts of regional trade agreements on technology adoption. Due to high intellectual property rights restrictions, regional trade agreements negatively affect super and significant power groups. In contrast, in the case of minor power groups, their impact on technology adoption is positive. These findings reveal that countries should focus on increasing geo-political security and enhancing economic ties with other regional powers to improve technology adoption.
