The international diffusion of biotechnology: the arrival of developing countries

According to conventional economic theory, countries tend to converge in economic and technological terms towards the leader. More recently, empirical approaches by economic historians (Abramovitz, Landes, Madison, Reinert) have found that while some countries are catching up, others are falling increasingly behind. Several theories compete to explain the precise mechanisms that explain how technological diffusion takes place. The paper reviews them and draws testable hypotheses for the study of international biotechnology diffusion. Biotechnologies are one of the leading sets of technologies developed in the late 20th century. They encompass applications in agriculture, chemicals, environment and pharmaceuticals. The United States has led the way in both scientific and industrial development of biotechnologies and these have quickly spread to Canada, Japan and Western Europe. Are the main developing countries adopting biotechnology? A study of the adoption of human health biotechnology in eight developing countries in Asia (China, India, Korea, and Singapore) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) was conducted, based on the analysis of in situ interviews, patents and scientific publication. The study shows a marked process of adoption and learning in science: each of the above-mentioned developing countries is increasing its share of world publication between 1996 and 2008. However, their share of biotechnology patents for the same period has barely increased. There are also regional differences in terms of sectoral concentration; Latin America, Argentina and Brazil are eager adopters of agricultural biotechnology and are moving up in the pharmaceutical records. Several Argentinean, Chinese, Indian, and South Korean pharmaceutical companies have been particularly active in the development of biogenerics.     

The Role of the Health System in Health Biotechnology in Developing Countries

This paper examines the role of local health systems in developing countries in health biotechnology innovation. The heath systems encompass the final users of health biotechnology products and services. In innovation studies in general, users have been identified as playing vital roles as sources for innovation and in shaping the innovation process. It is therefore of interest to cast light upon the role of users in the health biotechnology innovation in developing countries. This paper briefly reviews literature on science and technology based health innovation in both industrialised and developing countries. It then examines to what extent the focus of developing countries is on their local health problems and explores the linkages between the organisations involved in research and development of health biotechnology products and services with the local health system, and thereby identifies the main roles of their own health systems in the innovation process. The paper bases this analysis on research on publication patterns and case studies on leading developing countries in health biotechnology and focuses particularly on health biotechnology development in Brazil, Cuba and India.     

The conditions for the development of a biotechnology industry in Portugal: the impact of country specific factors

The innovation style of a country is dependent upon its distinctive capabilities and its government' policies. Three basic factors are involved: its scientific capabilities, its infrasturcture for transferring research from the public domain into industry, and its manufacturing base and industrial know-how. Most research looks at these three factors in relation to advanced economies, Asian Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) and 'third world' countries. This paper addresses these issues from the perspective of a European late-industrializing country (Portugal). It uses the twin ideas of National Innovation Systems and 'technological systems' to analyze the development of biotechnology in Portugal. In so doing it illustrates the impact of country specific factors on this development, and the problems assoicated with 'imitation'. The focus of the research is on Dedicated Biotechnology Firms (DBFs), as they are seen as intermediaries between the public science base and the productive sector. It examines the evolution of the biotechnology industry in Portugal, provides an overview of govermment policies, and finally discusses the implications for the creation and development of DBFs in Portugal. The research shows that there was a government effort to create a science base in this field, but there was no parallel strategy to develop a biotechnology industry. There was (and still is) little incentive to use the results of biotechnological research, and little match between technological and market opportunities. In conclusion, the paper argues that policies should be developed to bridge the gap between public research and industry. This will require mechanisms that, going beyond the notion of 'technology transfer', promote an effective transformation of advanced knowledge intergrated into products and services,a nd facilitate the dialogue and exchange between groups with diverse capabilities, objectives and languages.     

The harnessing of biotechnology in India: Which roads to travel?

In India, as in most developing countries, biotechnology was ushered in through public policy rather than individual firm initiatives. Throughout the 1980s and until the mid-1990s the focus of public policy was on creation of scientific capabilities and building of awareness of the potential of biotechnology. With the adoption of economic liberalization in the 1990s, the Indian State also began to sponsor private initiatives in capacity building. Today, the leading Indian firms have commercialized generic versions of original innovations developed by US and Japanese firms, using the traditional route of re-engineering. A handful of firms are actively engaged in first order innovation and in addition, a number of start-ups have emerged to make use of opportunities to provide contract research services to Western and Japanese multinationals. But can a focus on bio-generics and contracting for multinationals be used as a route for competence building and as a stepping stone to become original innovators? The present article shows that while India has ‘strong scientific and technological capabilities’, it is constrained by weak ‘social capabilities’ of its labor force, lack of ‘institutional capabilities’ in regulation and financing, infrastructural constraints and absence of national programs to achieve concrete targets in terms of biotechnology innovations to promote a more inclusive development.     

A case study on obstacles to the growth of biotechnology

Why has a biotechnology industry developed much faster in some countries than in others? Studies indicate that public funding for research is not sufficient for the establishment of a strong biotech industry. What should countries and regions do then, in order to become globally competitive in the area? In this paper I concentrate on the upstream section of biotech growth - the creation of new biotechnology companies - and take a closer look at the case of Portugal, a country where the industry has long been at an embryonic stage. It becomes apparent from the analysis that generalist, top-down measures to stimulate general technological development may not be appropriate to foster a sector composed of many unique characteristics. Evidence from several countries suggests that there is a group of specific factors which all have to be in place simultaneously to allow the emergence of a biotech industry. A careful analysis of the Portuguese example - when set against the background of European and Global biotech - may help regions such as southeast Asia and southern Europe define their paths to bio-competitiveness.     

Global dynamics,capabilities and the crisis

The financial crisis started in 2007–8, initially in the US, but its consequences have been felt throughout the global economy. However, its effects were far from uniform. While parts of Asia and Africa continued to grow fast, Europe experienced a large set back. This paper emphasizes three important factors: differences across countries in technological development; differences in capacities to exploit the opportunities offered by technology; and differences in the ability to compete in international market. A formal model, based on this approach, is developed and applied to data for 100 countries in the period 1997–2012. Empirical indicators reflecting the various factors are developed, a dataset constructed and econometric estimates of the model performed. The results are used to explore the factors behind the slowdown in economic growth, with a particular emphasis on the continuing stagnation in Europe. A major factor turns out to be the increased financialization of the economy. The negative effect of the growth of finance prior to the crisis is especially pronounced for the countries that suffered most during the crisis.     

Stochastic dominance relationships between stock and stock index futures markets: International evidence

In this paper, we first modify the stochastic dominance (SD) test for risk averters proposed by Davidson and Duclos (2000) to be the SD test for risk seekers. We then adopt both tests to examine the SD relationships between stock indices and their corresponding index futures for 10 countries. The sample contains data from 6 developed countries and 4 developing countries. The study proposes that there should be no SD relationship between spot and futures markets in developed financial markets in which arbitrage opportunities (both pure and quasi) are rare and short-lived. However, we expect that SD relationships could be found in emerging financial markets that have more impediments to arbitrage. Consistent with this conjecture, our study finds that there are no SD relationships between spot and futures markets in the mature market sample, implying that these markets could be efficient. However, for the emerging markets, spot dominates futures for risk averters, while futures dominate spot for risk seekers in the second- and third-order SD. These results indicate that there are potential gains in expected utilities for risk averters (seekers) if they switch their investment from futures (spot) to spot (futures) in the emerging markets.     

Satisfaction and comparison income in transition and developed economies

The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of different types of income comparison on subjective well-being in transition countries and developed European countries. The paper relies on the Life in Transition Survey (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 2011), which was conducted in late 2010 jointly by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. The emphasis of the paper is on income comparisons, specifically; local comparisons and self-ranking. The main findings reveal that comparisons have a significant impact on life satisfaction in transition countries, whereas the relationship between comparison and life satisfaction is ambiguous in developed European countries. In transition countries, the impact of comparisons is asymmetric: in most cases, under-performing one’s benchmark has a greater effect than out-performing it. In transition countries, both downward and upward evaluations have an impact on life satisfaction, while it is worthy of note that all upward evaluations have no effect on life satisfaction in developed European countries.     

Bioenergy innovation and energy policy

Using panel data on 13 OECD countries between 1979 and 2008 this paper examines the affect climate and energy policies have had on the rate of biotechnology innovations. The explanatory variables include a vector of important determinants of patenting activity for biotechnologies (e.g. specific and general research and development expenditures, energy consumption, energy prices and total number of registered patents). Fixed effects are employed to capture unobservable country-specific heterogeneity using a negative binomial model. The empirical results indicate that policies are important for stimulating innovations in biotechnologies. The development of feed-in-tariffs (FITs) and the implementation of tradable green certificates have had a positive and statistically significant impact on patent activity. The economic impact of green certificates is found to be larger than that of FITs. In addition, R&D activities have also had a positive and statistically significant effect on innovation.     

德国的工业生物技术

德国的工业生物技术具有很长的历史,目前在各行业的应用迅速增长.通过发展工业生物技术,德国提高了工业的竞争力和创造了大量就业机会.德国具有发展工业生物技术的雄厚工业基础及技术优势,但缺乏风险资本和配套政策.因此,目前德国正在研究发展工业生物技术的相关政策.     

INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITIES VS. INEQUALITY OF OUTCOMES: ARE WESTERN SOCIETIES ALL ALIKE?

This paper analyzes the relationship between income inequality and inequality of opportunities for income acquisition in nine developed countries during the 1990s. Equality of opportunity is defined as the situation where income distributions conditional on social origin cannot be ranked according to stochastic dominance criteria. We measure social origin by parental education and occupation and use the database built by Roemer et al. (2003 ). Stochastic dominance is assessed using nonparametric statistical tests. Our results indicate strong disparities in the degree of equality of opportunity across countries and a strong correlation between inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunity. The U.S. and Italy show up as the most unequal countries in terms of both outcome and opportunity. At the opposite extreme, income distributions conditional on social origin are almost the same in Scandinavian countries even before any redistributive policy. We complement the ordinal comparison by resorting to an original scalar “Gini” index of opportunities, which can be decomposed into a risk and a return component. In our sample, inequality of opportunity is mostly driven by differences in mean income conditional on social origin, and differences in risk compensate the return element in most countries.     

Are biotechnology and its clusters in crisis?

This paper asks whether biotechnology, in general, and the industry clusters of innovative biotechnology enterprises that have uniformly characterised its economic form, are now in a terminal crisis. Or are the difficulties that are clearly evident and described below surmountable and showing signs of being surmounted? The question of a crisis in biotechnology is important because so much faith has been placed in the technology over the past generation during which it has made great technical strides forward in medicine and other user communities (agro-food, energy, environment, security) and contributed significantly to healthcare and welfare gains while high hopes have long and justifiably been associated with its vibrant industry clusters. The paper postulates a crisis based on two key features of biotechnology. The first of these is an economic crisis in which enormous sums are required to research, develop and innovate new products, especially medical drugs. The second is epistemological and confronts the (reductionist) central dogma of biotechnology with the evolutionary implications of emergent systems biology.     

The Sins of the Fathers: Intergenerational Income Mobility in China

This paper aims to obtain an accurate estimate of China's intergenerational income mobility and to present evidence on its distributional pattern. Using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) over the period 1989–2009, I find that China is less mobile than most developed countries. Then, I employ five different approaches to investigate the distributional pattern of China's intergenerational mobility across income levels. The results suggest that poor families have relatively high mobility, indicating opportunities for the poor children to escape poverty. Finally, I show that while wealthy fathers are likely to pass on their favorable economic status to their sons, rich sons come from a very wide range of family economic backgrounds.     

How Does Globalization Affect Income Inequality? A Panel Data Analysis

One of the major issues on the state of income inequality is the effect of globalization through foreign direct investment (FDI). It is well known that FDI inflows create employment opportunities for unskilled labor intensive countries. Hence, during recessionary (expansionary) periods, FDI outflows should cause an increase in a developing (developed) country’s unemployment rate, worsening income inequality. This study differs from the previous literature by employing the key variables FDI, trade volume, and GINI coefficient for a panel of three groups of countries (developed, developing, and miracle countries). We estimated panel cointegration coefficients via FM-OLS. Our results show that the effects of trade liberalization and FDI on income distribution differ for different country groups.     

Diffusion of Kyoto's clean development mechanism

To date, developed countries can only tap mitigation opportunities in developing countries by investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Yet CDM investments have so far failed to reach all of the high-potential sectors identified in IPCC reports. This raises doubts about whether the CDM will be able to generate an adequate supply of credits from the limited areas where it has proved successful. Our paper examines the current trajectory of potential mitigation entering the CDM pipeline and projects it forward under the assumption that the diffusion of the CDM will follow a path similar to other kinds of innovations. Projections are then compared to pre-CDM predictions of the mechanism's potential market size used to assess Kyoto's cost, in order to discern whether limits on the types of project entering the pipeline will also limit the eventual supply of certified emission reductions (CERs). The main finding of the paper is that the mechanism is on track to deliver an average annual flow of roughly 700 million CERs by the close of 2012 and nearly to 1100 million tons by 2020. Parameter tests suggest that currently identified CDM investments will exceed early model predictions of the potential market for CDM projects.     

非洲边缘化与依附性试析

全球化过程中,非洲面临的挑战大于机遇。而最大的挑战源自边缘化与依附性并存。文章应用国际组织提出的报告对此做出统计分析。旨在用比较可靠的数据,参与非洲与全球化的学术讨论。同世界其他地区的横向比较表明,非洲正处于世界经济体系的最边缘。非洲自身的纵向比较显示,它在世界经济体系中的地位继续弱化。非洲的依附性表现在多个方面。商品进出口结构与贸易伙伴的空间分布,显示对发达国家的依附性。外资流入以官方援助为主,对发达国家提供的援助存在依附性。沉重的债务负担也加剧了依附性。     

欧盟工业生物技术研发现状及发展趋势分析

欧盟是现代工业制造业的发源地,长期保持着工业技术的世界领先水平。欧委会根据全球高新技术日新月异的快速发展及其重要性,以及欧盟相对处于世界领先地位的技术优先领域,扬长避短确定了欧盟工业可持续发展的六大关键势能技术(KETs)。工业生物技术,作为欧盟优先确定的六大关键势能技术之一,欧盟己制定具体的优惠政策和行动举措给予重点扶持,旨在提升欧盟先进制造业的世界竞争力,促进经济增长和扩大就业。通过综合研究分析欧盟工业生物技术及产业的发展现状、研发创新、面临的挑战和未来发展趋势,旨在为我国战略性新兴技术产业的可持续发展,提供有益的路径和经验借鉴。     

国际生物经济发展政策及对我国的启示

被誉为"第四次浪潮"的生物经济是一种全新的经济形态,将成为21世纪20年代后世界经济发展的主体。为了能成为生物经济浪潮的引领者,世界各国都制定了各种优惠政策来促进生物经济的发展,充分发挥生物经济对经济社会的推动作用。对在生物经济领域领先国家的生物技术产业发展政策进行梳理和分析,并在此基础上提出发展我国生物技术产业的政策和建议。     

世界生物技术的发展和展望

本文着重介绍了世界主要国家和地区 ,为在 2 1世纪生物技术领域的竞争中取得一席之地 ,制定并采取了一系列的有力措施 ;由于各国的重视 ,2 0世纪生物技术的发展成绩喜人 ,并为2 1世纪描绘出了美好前景     

The Effects of Consumer Bliss on Welfare Economics

Some developed countries have sought to counteract what they see as unfair competition faced by their domestic industries arising from the employment of child labor in the production of consumer goods in developing countries by including a "social clause" in the World Trade Organization (WTO) charter. Many people and civil society organizations in developed countries are also genuinely concerned with child labor employment purely on humanitarian grounds. In this paper we have argued that a more appropriate approach to tackle the child labor problem would be to facilitate acceleration of growth in developing countries through greater, not less, integration of these countries into the world trading system. We have also argued that directing development assistance for improving institutions and social infrastructure would be more effective than trade sanctions.