Foreign technology imports and economic growth in developing countries

The authors investigate the relationship between foreign technology imports and economic growth in developing countries. They develop an intertemporal endogenous growth model that explicitly accepts foreign technology imports as a factor of production. The model establishes a link between the growth rate of productivity in a developing country and the country's intensity of learning to use foreign technologies. They hypothesize that a developing country's economic growth rate increases as foreign technology imports increase. They run regressions with data for about 50 developing countries, using different econometric methods and time spans. These empirical tests confirm the hypothesis that foreign technology transfers boost income growth rates. Moreover, economic developing in developing countries differs from that in industrial countries. In developing countries, increases in productivity depend not on innovation but on importing foreign plants and equipment and on borrowing foreign technology.