Internal and external factors of competitiveness in the middle-income countries

The diverse group of middle-income countries (MIC) is composed by some economies with an active behavior in exports of technology-intensive goods that is strictly better than the group average. One of the factors explaining such a result is the improvement of their national technological capabilities that affects the dynamism of their productive and trade structure generating competitiveness gains. There are grounded reasons to think that this is also a consequence of external effects and the potential impacts that both trade and foreign direct investments (FDI) flows generate in those economies where foreign companies have contributed to the industrialization and modernization of their productive systems. In this paper, we analyze the possibilities of integration of the MIC economies into the dynamic high-tech markets as the interplay between the role of FDI and their ability for the absorption and creation of technology. We will observe based upon empirical analysis with panel data (1998-2005), what is the relative importance of internal and external factors for the improvement of the international competitiveness in these developing economies.