Innovation Shortfalls

Maloney, William ; Rodrí ; guez-Clare, André ; s

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS;    AVERAGE PRODUCTIVITY;    BENCHMARKING;    CAPITAL ACCUMULATION;    CAPITAL STOCK;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4283
RP-ID  :  WPS4283

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

There is a common perception that lowproductivity or low growth is due to what can be called an"innovation shortfall," usually identified as alow rate of investment in research and development (R&D)when compared with some high innovation countries. The usualreaction to this perceived problem is to call for increasesin R&D investment rates, usually specifying a targetthat can be as high as 3 percent of GDP. The problem withthis analysis is that it fails to see that a low R&Dinvestment rate may be appropriate given the economy'spattern of specialization, or may be just one manifestationof more general problems that impede accumulation of allkinds of capital. How can we know when a country suffersfrom an innovation shortfall above and beyond the ones thatshould be expected given the country's specializationand accumulation patterns? This is the question the authorstackle in this paper. First, they show a simple way toestimate the R&D gap that can be explained by acountry's specialization pattern, illustrating it forthe case of Chile. For this country they find that althoughits specialization in natural-resource-intensive sectorsexplains part of its R&D gap, a significant shortfallremains. Second, the authors show how a calibrated model canbe used to determine the R&D gap that should be expectedgiven a country's investment in physical and humancapital. If the actual R&D gap is above this expectedgap, then one can say that the country suffers from a trueinnovation shortfall.