Patterns of technological specialisation in Latin American and East Asian countries: an analysis of patents and trade flows

This article provides an extensive analysis of the technological specialisation of three Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico) and two East Asian countries (South Korea and Taiwan). Technological specialisation is measured both with respect to patents and trade flows. This article provides different measures of technological specialisation: Ricardian and Smithian specialisation indexes and the contribution to trade balance. These indicators provide a new picture of the evolution of the patterns of technological specialisation. Latin American countries show a divergent technological specialisation from East Asian countries, since the 1970s. In particular, Latin American countries display weaknesses in computers and communications and electrical and electronic sectors and their specialisation in fast growing technological classes is declining, in contrast to East Asian countries. While East Asian countries have shifted to specialised supplier or science-based sectors, Latin American countries have increased their trade specialisation in supplier-dominated or scale-intensive sectors.     

技术动态性、组织学习与技术追赶: 基于技术生命周期的分析

组织学习的研究说明，环境动态性越强，组织学习越重要。从技术动态性和组织学习角度出发．根据技术生命周期(TLC)，对发展中国家的技术追赶战略进行了研究。结果表明，在TLC的不同阶段，技术动态性强弱存在差异，相应地，对于处于不同发展阶段的技术实施技术追赶，追赶者应该具备的组织学习能力也不相同。成熟期和导入期技术是追赶者进行技术追赶的两个机会窗口，这两个机会窗口之间存在着逻辑递进关系，当组织学习能力较弱时，应优先选择成熟期技术进行追赶，当组织学习能力得到提升后，再选择导入期技术进行追赶，直至实现技术追赶的目标。     

Different Impacts of Scientific and Technological Knowledge on Economic Growth: Contrasting Science and Technology Policy in East Asia and Latin America

This paper conducts country‐panel econometric analysis with a focus on the different roles of scientific and technological knowledge on economic growth and on the knowledge production functions. It finds that it is not scientific knowledge (academic articles) but technological knowledge (patents) that matters for economic growth, and that generating scientific knowledge does not automatically lead to the generation of technological knowledge. We find that technological knowledge is primarily determined by corporate research and development efforts, which used to be more lacking in Latin American countries, compared with East Asia. This finding sheds new light on the question of why Latin American and East Asian countries have shown such divergent economic performances.     

东北亚国家出口多样化与经济增长的关系——基于动态面板数据的系统GMM估计

利用1996—2010年东北亚国家的贸易数据,验证了出口多样化与人均GDP之间的关系,并采用系统广义矩方法建立动态面板数据模型,估计了出口多样化对经济增长的贡献。结果表明:就东北亚单个国家而言,出口多样化与人均GDP之间呈U型变动关系,但就东北亚整体而言,这种U型关系并不明显;从东北亚国家的经验来看,出口多样化对经济增长具有积极作用;目前我国出口正处于从多样化向集中化转变的上升阶段,尚未达到U型曲线的拐点。     

The role of domestic savings in outward-oriented growth strategies

This paper presents a theory of technological catching-up in which local savings plays a key complementary role to international finance and foreign technology. Until now, the literature has primarily emphasized “outward orientation” as the key ingredient of catching-up success. It has indeed been argued that countries which have relied intensively on foreign technologies, either through capital goods imports or foreign direct investment inflows, have been successful while countries which have opted for inward-oriented growth strategy relying on domestic investment and import-substitution strategies have been unsuccessful. In this paper, we develop a sequential model of industrialization in which domestic savings is key to the success of outward-oriented growth strategies. Indeed, internal finance helps to overcome time-to-adjustment constraints which occur in the early phases of the catching-up process when both advanced foreign technologies and backward domestic ones co-exist. In this model, external finance, though international borrowing, and domestic savings are complementary, not substitutable, in the course of technological catching-up.

LAND DISTRIBUTION INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: TRANSMISSION CHANNELS AND EFFECTS

Abstract.  Land reform in Asian countries is often mentioned as one explanation for the successful economic performance of several Asian countries. Latin American countries did not have land reform and therefore have had lower economic growth. However, this legitimate guess has only scarce evidences. We use a new analytical method to investigate some plausible channels and effects, and we find supportive evidences that part of the regional differential in economic performance of the East Asian and Latin American regions can be explained by their difference in land distribution inequality.     

拉丁美洲与中国的国际贸易：经济增长的启示

基于扩展的标准化二次利润函数模型实证研究拉美国家对中国出口绩效的结果表明,拉美国家对中国的良好出口绩效促进了拉丁美洲经济增长,但也使拉美国家产生对低廉价格和微薄利润的长期依赖性,以至于削弱了拉美经济的成长性。鉴于此,拉美国家应该从当前的产品基础中摆脱出来,寻求出口产品多元化,并积极向价值链的更高位置攀升,以保持全球竞争力。     

中国汽车企业技术追赶模式差异化的实证分析

鉴于主流技术追赶理论不能完全解释中国汽车企业的技术追赶实践,总结和分析了中国汽车企业的技术追赶模式及其绩效差异。研究结果显示:中国汽车企业在技术追赶中采取的是混合模式,具体模式包括合资主导模式、引进主导模式、引进辅助模式、自主开发模式和合作开发模式;技术追赶模式影响技术追赶绩效,按绩效从高到低对技术追赶模式进行排序,依次为自主开发模式、引进辅助模式、合作开发模式、引进主导模式和合资主导模式;采用同一技术追赶模式的企业不必然获得相似的技术追赶绩效;新兴汽车企业的技术追赶绩效明显优于传统汽车企业。     

基于产业创新系统的中、印、日技术赶超案例分析

通过回顾产业创新系统理论的研究文献,发现可将影响产业技术赶超路径的因素分为3个层面——知识技术、参与主体以及制度法规。结合产业技术赶超的作用路径,构建了机制模型,并以印度制药产业、中国生物产业、日本电子产业为例展开分析。结果表明:不同产业对知识技术投入、参与主体协同、制度法规制定的倚重程度不同;只有根据各产业的特点来选择技术赶超路径,才能充分发挥产业创新系统的驱动作用,实现技术赶超。     

技术多元化对企业持续创新的影响——基于佳能的纵向案例分析

基于资源能力和知识学习的视角,采用单案例研究方法探索了日本佳能公司的技术多元化战略的形成及演化过程,进而总结了技术多元化对企业持续创新的影响机制。研究发现:技术机会能力、产品开发战略以及外部知识获取在技术多元化影响企业持续创新的过程中起中介作用;不同类型的技术多元化对企业持续创新的影响路径存在差异。     

核心元件产业追赶问题研究——以我国数控系统产业发展为例

以我国数控系统产业为例,对核心元件产业追赶问题进行了探讨。研究发现:在开放条件下,外部技术资源的整合和利用是产业追赶的技术基础,新技术轨道的出现为产业追赶提供了技术机会;结构性多层次的市场是核心元件产业追赶的重要资源,支持国产产品的需求拉动政策是降低市场壁垒的有效手段。     

EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES AND MONETARY COOPERATION: LESSONS FROM EAST ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA*

This paper analyses the mechanisms of, and draws lessons from, currency crises in Asian and Latin American countries in the 1990s and 2000s. In Asian countries fiscal deficits were insignificant in size, and were not part of a crisis trigger, while in Latin America they played a major role in the crisis story. Crisis management by international financial institutions has been evolving over the last 10 years, and private‐sector involvement (PSI) has occupied centre‐stage in efforts to reform the international financial architecture. Sovereign debts, a focus of PSI discussions, were neither a cause nor a propagation of the Asian crises.     

Premature deindustrialization

I document a significant deindustrialization trend in recent decades that goes considerably beyond the advanced, post-industrial economies. The hump-shaped relationship between industrialization (measured by employment or output shares) and incomes has shifted downwards and moved closer to the origin. This means countries are running out of industrialization opportunities sooner and at much lower levels of income compared to the experience of early industrializers. Asian countries and manufactures exporters have been largely insulated from those trends, while Latin American countries have been especially hard hit. Advanced economies have lost considerable employment (especially of the low-skill type), but they have done surprisingly well in terms of manufacturing output shares at constant prices. While these trends are not very recent, the evidence suggests both globalization and labor-saving technological progress in manufacturing have been behind these developments. The paper briefly considers some of the economic and political implications of these trends.     

Asian economic success and Latin American failure in the 1980s: new analyses and future policy implications

A striking feature of the world economy during the last decade has been the collapse of economic growth in Latin America whilst industrialization and development have proceeded apace in the Asian countries. This paper, firstly, reviews and assesses alternative hypotheses concerning Asian economic success and the Latin American failure during the 1980s. Secondly, it examines the related question of the long-term development strategies followed by the outstandingly successful east Asian economies. The paper arrives at rather different analyses and policy conclusions on these issues from those of the international financial institutions and the mainstream economists.     

Further evidence on international Islamic and conventional portfolios diversification under regime switching

This article investigates the comparative performance of International Islamic and conventional portfolio diversification across different financial market regimes and provides an optimal choice from an American investor’s viewpoint during the period 2002–2014. Using a bootstrap-based stochastic dominance (SD) test and monthly MSCI prices of Islamic stock market indices and their conventional counterparts in 38 countries from North and Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions, we find that SD relationships between Islamic and conventional optimal-diversified portfolios change systematically according to investment region and market regime. Essentially, for all regimes, US investors are indifferent between Islamic diversification and its conventional counterpart, which implies that arbitrage diversification opportunities are rare and short lived in all regions. However, across all regions, especially in a crisis regime, Islamic portfolio diversification can be a good substitute for conventional diversification. Islamic portfolio diversification in North and Latin America, Europe and Global regions is an optimal choice for the risk-averse American investors. Finally, results imply that portfolio diversification among Islamic market indices can be a good hedge, offering investors superior investment alternatives during any financial meltdown or economic slowdown due to the conservative nature of Sharia-compliant investments.     

Generalized barriers to entry and economic development

In their catching-up processes, less developed countries face inter-country barriers which hamper their efforts to imitate the technologies of advanced countries. These international barriers to entry can be traced back to differences in the institutions supporting technological advancement and to the physical and intangible resources necessary for the creation of new competences. In less developed countries, these international barriers aggravate the barriers to entry at the sectoral level and, together, they constitute the generalized barriers to entry. In our paper, we extend a model of economic growth by the entry of new sectors by including these international barriers and show how widening development gaps describing the differences in general income and employment trends can emerge in an auto-catalytic process.     

A note on schooling and wage inequality in the public and private sector

The few studies that have examined the wage impact of education across the earning distribution have focused on high-income countries and show education to be more profitable at the top of the distribution. The implication is that education may increase inequality. Extending the analysis to 16 East Asian and Latin American countries, in Latin America we observe a pattern similar to that of Europe/North America (increasing wage effects), while in East Asia the wage effects are predominantly decreasing by earnings quantile. However, once the analysis is performed separately for the public and the private sector, it is revealed that the strongly decreasing impact of schooling on earnings in the public sectors of East Asian countries is responsible for the overall observed decreasing pattern, while the impact of schooling on earnings in the private sectors of these countries is non-decreasing.     

Constructing Projects of National Development in Latin America?

Abstract

This article analyzes technology-related development in Latin America from a heterodox perspective based in Institutionalist and Structuralist Economics. Since the 1970s, the lack of systematic national projects designed to institutionalize endogenous innovation capabilities in the region has constituted a critical structural impediment to development. Eschewing the creation of public goods, most nations in Latin America abandoned important incipient efforts to develop technological autonomy as undertaken during the state-led industrialization period. This article highlights poorly understood but relatively successful aspects of the import substitution industrialization (ISI) strategy on technological advancement in the state-led era. Recently, neoliberalism's monolithic grip has been loosened. Brazil has undergone somewhat of a paradigmatic shift while advancing toward the creation of a national innovation system (NIS), thereby offering important lessons for other Latin American nations. Mexico, in contrast, shows no indication of attaining autonomous technological capabilities. The attainment of such capabilities in highly industrialized countries, and fast developing Asian nations, partially resulted from the construction of a NIS. The creation of a NIS embodies an interactive and interdependent process: it entails the joint and combined participation of scientists and others involved in research and development (R&D) activities in (1) the public and private sectors and (2) universities. These elements combine with agents of the state empowered to finance and coordinate the construction and maintenance of the NIS. The construction of a NIS has induced “increasing returns” in production processes. As Furtado emphasized, supply-enhancing technological capacity must be met by inclusive demand-enhancing policies that embed the vast underlying population in the growth process.     

Technological specialization and economic performance in oecd countries

The paper investigates the growing sectoral specialization in technological activities of OECD countries (measured using patent data) and its impact on countries innovative-and economic performance in the 1975-1990 period. Aggregate indicators of sectoral specialization are introduced, showing the extent to which countries concentrate their innovations in few fields, or spread them across several sectors. A general positive relationship us found between the degree of specializatin in technology and higher rates of growth, while specialization in electronics-related fields in not associated to better economic or technological performances.The position of individual countries in these patterns is also examined, showing that specialization has been an element of the catching-up process of the past decades, which has led to a growing economic convergence among OECD countries.     

Choosing sides in the trilemma: international financial cycles and structural change in developing economies

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the impact of international financial cycles on structural change in developing economies. It is argued that the impact of these cycles depends on the specific combination of macroeconomic and industrial policies adopted by the developing economy. The cases of Brazil and Argentina are contrasted with those of Korea and China. In the Asian economies, macroeconomic policy has been a complementary tool along with industrial policy to foster the diversification of production and capabilities. Inversely, in the case of the Latin American countries, long periods of real exchange rate (RER) appreciation, combined with the weaknesses (or absence) of industrial policies, contributed to the loss of capabilities and lagging behind.