Abstract
This book investigates the structure and the changes over time of the technological specialization of advanced countries. Innovation is generally regarded as one of the key determinants of national economic performance and competitiveness. During the 1980s much attention was devoted to understanding its dynamics and impact. An increasing amount of studies have been devoted to the aggregate quantity of resources devoted to Science and Technology (S&T). However, less attention has been paid to a systematic analysis of national activities at the sectoral level. One stream of studies has pointed out that technological change is highly diversified across sectors and countries,1 suggesting that the importance of the innovations of each country differ strongly according to their sectoral specialization. We shall here explore the relationship between general tendencies in the S&T system on the one hand and national patterns of sectoral specialization on the other.
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Notes
The paradigmatic works of this new stream in the field of the economics of technological change include Rosenberg (1976, 1982), Nelson and Winter (1982), Freeman (1982), Pavitt (1984, 1987), Dosi et al. (1988).
On the role of multinational firms in the global economy, see, among others, Dunning (1988), Holland (1987), Van Tulder and Junne (1988). For a recent survey, see the OECD report of the Technology and Economy Program, OECD (1990).
The research teams of the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex and of the Department of Economics of the University of Reading have investigated the role of multinational firms in the national patterns of technological specialization. See Patel and Pavitt (1989a), and Cantwell and Hodson (1990).
Throughout this report, by “profile of specialization” is meant the vector showing the relative distribution of activities of a country in all the sectors according to one of the databases considered.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Archibugi, D., Pianta, M. (1992). Introduction and Summary. In: The Technological Specialization of Advanced Countries. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7999-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7999-5_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-015-8001-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-7999-5
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