This paper investigates the role of technology club heterogeneity in economic growth and convergence. To do so, we break up labor productivity change into three factors – efficiency, technological, and capital–labor ratio changes – while distinguishing the impact of technology club heterogeneity respectively. This allows us to observe what is happening within and between clubs; as well as between the world and club technologies. Our labor productivity decomposition is nonparametric in nature and thus overcomes the issue of specifying functional forms for the club technologies. Our results reveal the existence of technology heterogeneity and divergence: the world technology is defined by advanced and rich countries; there exists intra-convergence phenomena (mostly due to capital–labor ratio change), but inter-convergences (owning to capital–labor ratio and technological changes) are not found. Finally, we argue that follower and marginalized countries have adopted imitating strategies, but with respect to different dimensions, namely technological change or capital–labor ratio.

本文研究了技术俱乐部异质性在经济增长和融合中的作用。为此，我们将劳动生产率的变化分为三个因素：效率，技术和资本劳动比率的变化，同时分别区分技术俱乐部异质性的影响。这使我们能够观察俱乐部内部和俱乐部之间发生的事情。以及世界和俱乐部技术之间。我们的劳动生产率分解本质上是非参数的，因此克服了为俱乐部技术指定功能形式的问题。我们的结果揭示了技术异质性和多样性的存在：世界技术是由发达国家和富裕国家定义的；存在内部收敛现象（主要是由于资本劳动比率的变化），但是没有发现相互融合（归因于资本劳动比率和技术变革）。最后，我们认为追随者和边缘化国家已经采取了模仿战略，但是在不同方面，即技术变革或资本劳动比率。