Productivity and External Knowledge: The Italian Case

In this paper, we make use of the general notion of localised technological change, as defined in Antonelli (1999), to improve our understanding of economic growth at the national level. Traditionally, the literature on economic growth has overlooked the role of the exchange of technological knowledge as a potential growth factor because technology is thought of as not localised and appropriability rather poor. When, on the contrary, appropriability conditions are considered more robust and technological change becomes localised there is room for a market of technological knowledge at the international level. The paper provides descriptive evidence about the evolution of total factor productivity in the Italian case and focuses attention on the role of technology payments with respect to domestic research and development (R&D) expenditures on economic growth. Explorative time series analysis conducted within a traditional growth accounting framework confirms that external knowledge, purchased on international technological markets, contributes in explaining the dynamics of domestic output growth in Italy.