"Globalization": Modeling technology adoption timing across countries

We study global adoption processes where the units of observation are count ries which sequentially adopt a particular innovation. Our goal is to provi de a better understanding of how exogenous and endogenous country character istics affect this diffusion process. We develop a general model of global adoption processes that allows researchers to test extant theories of cross -country adoption, and illustrate the approach using data from the cellular telephone industry for 184 countries. In our application, we find support for the existence of a global "demonstration effect": as the number of coun tries adopting the technology becomes larger, the likelihood of "similar" c ountries following their example increases. We also find that isolated econ omies lag in adopting technologies, and that countries with homogenous and concentrated populations, and with a high level of economic development are , on average, earlier adopters. Finally, our model supports the managerial intuition that, eventually, all countries will adopt cellular technology. ( C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.