It disproportionately affects less-developed countries.

Another issue is related to the `North-South' perspective. Rich countries develop new innovations that are applied across the world, then the rich countries notice that these innovations are toxic or harmful, and either move on to better alternatives or develop infrastructures to deal with the waste or simply export their waste (e.g. electronic waste). Poor countries, on the other hand, may not have the institutional structures in place to enable them to contain the problems. Most academic research on innovation focuses on its production in R&D intensive sectors in rich nations. But this is a very misleading view of innovation. For most people, in most countries, for most of history, innovation is not something that was developed where they live to address their problems. Innovation is, instead, something that happens in other places, is adapted to the institutions and culture of those places and comes from those places. Its arrival can be very disruptive because it may not necessarily fit with the local environment, and the changes that are required can be experienced as an imposition. In this spirit, Hansen and Nygaard (this issue) discuss the problem of solar waste in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is an interesting issue for public policy and normative social science about how the downsides of innovation are socially distributed both internationally and within nations.