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The World Bank publishes an annual report, 'Global Economic Prospects,' that measures technological progress in terms of the spread of techniques, ideas and new forms of business organizations. The report draws upon such varied things as the hours of electricity available per day, imports of capital and high-tech good, measures of educational standards, and a country's financial structure. This year's report concludes that the use of modern technology in poor and middle-income nations is catching up with the West. Although developing countries do a good job of getting access to technology through foreign trade, foreign investment, and emigration to the West, they do a much poorer job at widely disseminating the new technologies, causing technology use to be highly concentrated and uneven within and between emerging economies. The diffusion of technology in developing countries is, in general, slow and incomplete. Two historical obstacles stand in the way of diffusion: a country's technological inheritance and a host of intangible things such as education, financial system, research and development, and quality of government. The absorption of technology has increased dramatically in developing countries, but the diffusion has a long way to go.
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