Although never rigorously tested, it has become a sort of accepted wisdom amongst social scientists that government decentralization offers key advantages for innovators. Decentralized governments are widely seen as agile, competitive, and well structured to adapt to innovation’s gale of creative destruction. Meanwhile, centralized states, even when democratic, have come to be viewed as rigid and thus hostile to the risks, costs, and change associated with new technology; or are subject to capture by status-quo interest groups which use their influence to promote policies which ultimately restrict technological change. Therefore decentralized government is often perceived as a necessary institutional foundation for encouraging long-run technological innovation. In the following article, this wisdom is tested using data on international patent activity, scientific publications, and high-technology exports. The results suggest that the supposed technological advantages of decentralized states are a fiction, and that international pressures may be more important.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
10996.
Length: Date of creation: 2007 Date of revision: Publication status: Published in Review of Policy Research 24.3(2007): pp. 231-257 Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10996
Find related papers by JEL classification: O11 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development O38 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Government Policy H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives O14 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
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.:
Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan, 1995.
"Technology and trade,"
Handbook of International Economics,
in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1279-1337
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1994.
"Technology and Trade,"
NBER Working Papers
4926, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)