Increases in the stock of ideas possessed by societies are central to modern economic growth. The implications of idea flows are striking: Klenow and Rodriguez-Clare (2005) estimate world production would be just 6% of its current level if countries did not share ideas. Yet, although theoretical economists have studied ideas and their diffusion extensively, empirical studies are scarce because ideas are inherently difficult to measure. Previous empirical studies of idea flows have tended to use proxies such as trade flows, foreign direct investment, migration, and patent citations. However, with the exception of the latter, these measures are not pure idea flows, and do not capture the key properties of ideas, namely non-rivalry and disembodiedness. My research proposes a novel measure of idea flows, namely book translations, and uses it to study the factors that affect the international diffusion of ideas. Book translations are an attractive way to quantify idea flows because they are both non-rival and disembodied; they are a pure measure of idea flows rather than a by-product of a process such as trade or migration, and their key purpose is to make the ideas contained in the book accessible to speakers of another language. In chapter 2, I outline the economics literature on ideas and their diffusion. I motivate and discuss book translations as a measure of idea flows, and provide a framework for thinking about when translations are likely to occur. I describe the translation data in chapter 3. The source of the data is an international bibliography of translations collected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. From this bibliography, I compile a data set of over 2 million translations published in 80 countries since the 1949, including detailed information on each title translated. I then document the main patterns of translation flows. In chapter 4, I employ a gravity framework to study how distance affects translation flows between countries. This sheds light both on the barriers to international idea diffusion and on the underlying causes of the negative relationship between distance and trade. Translations differ from trade in that they have zero transportation costs, but they are subject to similar search and information costs and costs of forming contracts. I estimate a gravity model where bilateral translation flows vary with the sizes of the countries and the distance between them, and find the elasticity of translations with respect to distance to be between -0.3 and -0.5 for the 1990s; these values are significantly smaller than the equivalent elasticity for trade found in the literature, suggesting a significant role for transportation costs in the distance effect on trade. In addition, I present several pieces of evidence that suggest supply-side frictions play a larger role in the distance effect on translations than do consumer preferences. For instance, the speed with which titles are translated, which is likely to largely capture supply frictions as opposed to demand factors, decreases significantly with distance. Finally, in joint work with Ran Abramitzky (chapter 5), I study how the collapse of the Communist regime in Eastern Europe at the close of the 1980s affected the international diffusion of ideas. We show that while translations between Communist languages decreased by two thirds with the collapse, Western-to-Communist translations increased by a factor of seven and reached Western levels. Convergence was full in economically-beneficial fields such as sciences and only partial in culturally-beneficial fields such as history. The effects were larger for more Western-oriented countries. These findings help us understand how institutions shape the international diffusion of knowledge and demonstrate the importance of preferences in determining the type of ideas that diffuse into a country.

The complex diffusion processes affecting the flow of planning ideas and practices across the globe are illustrated in this book. It raises questions about why and how some ideas and practices attract international attention, and about the invention processes which go on when external influences are woven together with local efforts to meet local specifics and requirements. Initiated to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the journal Planning Theory and Practice in 2009, this book reflects the themes of the journal. Taking different intellectual perspectives, this collection takes a critical look at the international diffusion of planning ideas and practices, their impacts on planning practices in different contexts, on the challenge of ‘situating’ planning practices, and on the ethical and methodological issues of international exchange in the planning field.

"Why do some countries governed by moderate neoliberalism while others by a radical one? Looking at Spain and Romania, the book points to the role of local intellectual traditions, the strength of international alternatives, the resources of the local advocates of neoliberalism and their vulnerability to external coercion"--

In an increasingly global community of researchers and practitioners, new technologies and communication means have made the transfer of policies from one country or region to another progressively more prevalent. There has been a lot of attention in the field of public administration paid to policy transfer and institutional transplantation. This book aims to create a better understanding of such transfers in the water management sector. These include the adoption of modern water management concepts, such as integrated water resources management and forms of water governance, which are strongly promoted and sometimes also imposed by various international organizations. Transfers also occur within the scope of development aid or for the purpose of creating business opportunities. In addition, many research organisations, consultancies and governmental agencies are involved in cross-border work. The purpose of this book is therefore to present practical examples of the transfer of modern water management from one locality to another and to critically discuss the transferability of policy and governance concepts by analysing the contextual needs and factors. Case studies are included from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It is argued that in many cases context matters in water management and that there is no panacea or universal concept that can be applied to all countries or regions with different political, economic, cultural and technological contexts. Yet it is also shown that some countries are facing pressing and similar water management issues that cut across national borders, and hence the transfer of knowledge may be beneficial.

International organizations have consistently influenced education reforms in Latin America, but not all countries have adopted the same policy recommendations. This book offers a unique comparative analysis of secondary education reforms in Chile, Argentina, and Colombia, from the 1960s to the 2010s, with a focus on three key areas: manpower planning, state-retrenchment (market-based versus active-state), and ideas about having a right to a quality education in an era of government accountability. While responding to similar policy recommendations, these countries have differed in how they have implemented decentralization, incorporated private actors, allocated authority over curriculum, and established instruments of accountability. Claudia Diaz-Rios traces the legacies of previous education policies and local struggles among stakeholders in reshaping—and sometimes rejecting—foreign recommendations. Translating Global Idea will be an invaluable resource for scholars of comparative politics and the globalization of education—particularly those interested in policy development in middle- and low-income countries, as well as practitioners invested in promoting education policy changes in Latin America.

This collection of essays examines how spatial mobilities of people and practices, technologies and objects, knowledge and ideas have shaped the production, circulation, and transfer of knowledge in different historical and geographical contexts. Targeting an interdisciplinary audience, Mobilities of Knowledge combines detailed empirical analyses with innovative conceptual approaches. The first part scrutinizes knowledge circulation, transfer, and adaption, focussing on the interpersonal communication process, early techniques of papermaking, a geographical text, indigenous knowledge in exploration, the genealogy of spatial analysis, and different disciplinary knowledges about the formation of cities, states, and agriculture. The second part analyses the interplay of mediators, networks, and learning by studying academic careers, travels, and collaborations within the British Empire, public internationalism in Geneva, the global transfer of corporate knowledge through expatriation, graduate mobility from the global south to the global north, and the international mobility of degree programs in higher education.This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This book builds on research in translation studies of change in organizations and demonstrates the implications and application of these findings for managing innovation and change. When implementing ideas into practice in order to carry out innovative change, translation is key. From strategic and leadership changes to policy and health management decisions, abstract ideas such as ‘LEAN’, ‘CSR’, ‘Sustainability’, ‘Public-Private Partnerships’, ‘Clinical Pathways’ and ‘AI’ are introduced to improve organizational processes. However, in any company and organization, miscommunication and misinterpretation can lead to these ideas being modified, added to and appropriated in ways that make them unsuccessful. This book presents a case for change ideas in organizations being translated rather than “implemented” and offers a profound understanding of the translation processes needed in order for this to succeed. This vital study is a must-read for researchers, students and practitioners including change agents, general and health care managers, public servants as well as strategic managers and policy decision-makers.