There is a common perception that low productivity or low growth is due to what can be called an `innovation shortfall,` usually identified as a low rate of investment in research and development (RD) compared with some high-innovation countries. The usual reaction to this perceived problem is to call for increases in RD investment rates, usually specifying a target that can be as high as 3 percent of GDP. The problem with this analysis is that it fails to see that a low RD investment rate may be appropriate given the economy`s pattern of specialization, or may be just one manifestation of more general problems that impede accumulation of all kinds of capital. When does a country suffer from an innovation shortfall above and beyond the ones that should be expected given its specialization and accumulation patterns? This is the question tackled in this paper. First, it shows a simple way to estimate the RD gap that can be explained by a country`s specialization pattern, and illustrates this with the case of Chile. The analysis finds that although Chile`s specialization in natural-resource-intensive sectors explains part of its RD gap, a significant shortfall remains. Second, it shows how a calibrated model can be used to determine the RD gap that should be expected given a country`s investment in physical and human capital. If the actual RD gap is above this expected gap, the country suffers from a true innovation shortfall.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department in its series RES Working Papers with number
4429.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)