Abstract
In the previous four Chapters the specialization profiles of advanced countries have been identified according to both technology and science indicators. The mapping of sectoral strengths and weaknesses, however, also requires a description of how concentrated (or spread out) national science and technology activities are across fields. Beyond analysis at the sectoral level, in fact, the resulting aggregate tendencies, and differences existing among countries, should be explored. This Chapter examines the extent to which countries focus their efforts in a few areas of science and technology, or distribute their resources over many different fields. This analysis qualifies the study of national sectoral specialization developed in the previous Chapters, and constitutes an original contribution of this report.
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Notes
By “degree of specialization” we mean an indicator of how evenly or unevenly the scientific or technological activities of a given country are distributed across all the sectors.
See, among a large literature, Kristensen and Levinsen (1983), Walsh (1988). This link has also been found for trade in high technology products. A recent study (Amendola and Perrucci, 1990) has found an inverse relationship between the degree of specialization of the distribution of national trade in 250 very detailed high technology product groups on the one hand, and the size of countries on the other.
In a work in progress report (Archibugi and Pianta, 1989), we have examined the standard deviations of the vectors of specialization indexes (TRCA) obtained for patents. However, the indexes of specialization have asymmetrical values (the value ranges from 0 to 1 in the case of a country’s disadvantage, but from 1 to ∞ in the case of an advantage), and this is also reflected in the values of the standard deviation (see Grupp and Schwitalla (1989), Engelsmann and van Raan (1990)). The chi square values offer a better description of the countries’ distribution of activities across sectors. The findings for both the indicators considered, however, draw a similar picture of the degree of specialization of the countries considered.
Since a country with a chi square value equal to 0 would not have any sectors of relative strength or weakness, its specialization indexes would be equal to 1 in all the classes.
In calculating the chi squares, the residual classes have been excluded; the values are calculated on 31 IPC classes (exluding the class Others) and on 41 SIC classes (exluding the classes Unclassified and Other industries).
Data on cumulative R&D expenditure are drawn from the OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators and are expressed in millions of US dollars at 1985 constant prices. For exchange rates, OECD purchasing power parities have been used. Missing values in the OECD series have been replaced by the estimated values of the regression line for the 1975–88 period. Similar results can also be obtained by using the R&D performed in the business sector as an indicator.
Portugal has been excluded from these graphs and the calculations of the regression lines due to the extremely high (and unreliable) value of its chi square.
While the original database includes 106 subfields, those with the smallest number of papers and citations have been merged into other classes, in order to assure statistically significant results in the analysis of sectoral specialization. The 8 fields of science are subdivided as follows: Clinical Medicine in 34 subfields; Biomedical research in 15 subfields; Biology in 10 subfields; Chemistry in 7 subfields; Physics in 9 subfields; Earth and Space sciences in 5 subfields; Engineering and Technology in 12 subfields; Mathematics in 4 subfields. The full statistical analysis of bibliometric data at this level of disaggregation is provided in Pianta and Simonetti, 1990.
OECD data from the Main Science and Technology Indicators have been used. The OECD series is, however, highly incomplete and some estimates had to be made. In evaluating this indicator, it should also be remembered also that the propensity of researchers to publish papers varies widely across fields and countries, for institutional and other reasons, and different behaviour can be found between university scientists and researchers in government and non-profit institutions. Furthermore some papers included in the data bases considered are authored by people not included in this group, especially in the business sector. For all these reasons, the data on researchers should be considered with caution. It should be remembered, however, that all the measures of the size of a country’s scientific activity are strongly and positively correlated.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Archibugi, D., Pianta, M. (1992). Degree of Specialization and Size of National Scientific and Technological Activities. In: The Technological Specialization of Advanced Countries. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7999-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7999-5_8
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