BOOK TRANSLATIONS AS IDEA FLOWS: THE EFFECTS OF THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM ON THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE | Zendy

Abramitzky Ran | Zendy; Sin Isabelle | Zendy

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BOOK TRANSLATIONS AS IDEA FLOWS: THE EFFECTS OF THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM ON THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

Author(s) -

Abramitzky Ran,

Sin Isabelle

Publication year - 2014

Publication title -

journal of the european economic association

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 7.792

H-Index - 93

eISSN - 1542-4774

pISSN - 1542-4766

DOI - 10.1111/jeea.12093

Subject(s) - communism , convergence (economics) , diffusion , western europe , post communist , political science , communist state , economic geography , political economy , economic system , economics , economy , development economics , international trade , law , economic growth , physics , european union , politics , thermodynamics

We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism's collapse in Eastern Europe on these flows. Using novel data on 800,000 translations and difference‐in‐differences approaches, we show that while translations between Communist languages decreased by two thirds with the collapse, Western‐to‐Communist translations increased by a factor of 4 and quickly converged to Western levels. Convergence was more pronounced in the fields of applied and social sciences, and was more complete in Satellite and Baltic than in Soviet countries. We discuss how these patterns help us understand how repressive institutions and preferences towards Western European ideas shaped the international diffusion of knowledge.

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