This paper is based on the premise that economic growth is driven by an interplay between innovation and imitation in an economy composed of interacting ̄rms operating in a stochastic environment. A novel approach to modeling imitation is presented based on range-dependent processes that describe how ̄rms consider proximity when imitating peers who are found in a given neighborhood in terms of productivity. Using a particularly tractable approach, we are able to analyze how drastically di®erent economic growth scenarios emerge from di®erent im- itation strategies. These emerging scenarios range from di®usive growth where the variance of productivity grows inde ̄nitely, to balanced growth described by a traveling wave with ̄xed variance. The latter scenario is sustained only when imitation strength among ̄rms exceeds a critical bifurcation threshold.