This paper analyses the pathways of technology diffusion through social networks, following the experimental introduction of new technologies in Guinea-Bissau. In the context of an agricultural extension project, we document both the direct effects...
This paper reviews the innovative capabilities and absorptive capacities of African countries, and investigates whether they have played significant roles in the region’s slow and episodic economic growth. Results from cross-country regressions...
A firm’s business model describes the way in which it creates, delivers, and appropriates value. In the debate about the ongoing demise of several e-commerce ventures, only a few analysts have looked at the relative sanity of innovative e-business...
This paper explores the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the productivity of host country domestic firms. We rely on a specially designed survey of over 4000 manufacturing firms in Vietnam, and separate out productivity gains...
This paper positions itself among the very rare microeconomic analyses on the consequences of civil war. Up to now, most analyses on this topic are based upon household surveys. The originality of the present study is that it investigates for the...
This paper empirically investigates the effects of environmental policy, institutions, political orientation, and lobbying on energy innovation and finds that they significantly affect the incentives to innovate and create cleaner energy efficient...
Factors determining the diffusion of digital mobile telephony across 200 developed and developing countries in the 1990s are studied with the aid of a Gompertz model. The market size and network effects are found to play more important roles in the...
There is increasing evidence to suggest that a fundamental source of information for farmers on how to access and use new agricultural technologies comes from interacting with neighbours. Economic research on adoption of innovations in a rural...
This paper aims to analyse the effects of institution quality on technology catch-up in five North African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia) compared to 3 groups of developing and emerging countries (Sub Saharan Africa, Asia, and...
Fast-growing developing countries have emerged as an important destination and source of trade, investments and technology. Furthermore, trade between developing countries has grown rapidly over the last decades, and is becoming more diversified...
Otto Toivanen At least since the 1950s it has been recognized that innovation is central to economic growth. It has also been well understood that...
Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Guanghua Wan China and India have become global economic powers. Even at the market exchange rate, China overtook Japan...
This policy brief provides some fresh perspectives on the relationship between entrepreneurship and development, and considers policy design issues. It reports on the UNU-WIDER two-year research project 'Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity', which...
In this paper, we investigate the relationship between exporting and productivity in the case of Vietnam using an extensive firm level panel dataset for the period 2005-11. We separate out productivity effects of exporting due to self-selection...
Part of Journal Special Issue Economics of climate change impacts on developing countries
The present study aims to explore economic and socio-demographic factors that influence the household’s probability to switch from firewood to clean fuels in northern Cameroon. The paper employs an ordered probit model to construct cooking patterns...
This paper is a short history of the Indian economy since 1968. India today is a changed country from what it was half a century ago, when Myrdal published his Asian Drama. The stranglehold of low growth has been broken, its population below the...
The benefits from the New Economy should accrue as improvements in productivity and economic growth. But while the use of information and communication technology (ICT) seems to have had a substantial impact on the performance of the United States...
The rapid diffusion of computers has widely changed the consequences of computer use on the labour market. While at the beginning of the eighties knowledge of computers was an obvious advantage in a career, this same knowledge is now so commonplace...
This paper discusses new ideas in growth theory focusing on how to make sustained growth feasible. It first reviews models that broadened the notion of capital to include human capital and the state of technology. The paper next surveys models which...
This paper surveys issues related to globalization, and the obstacles to the successful integration of vulnerable economies. For many developing countries, the positive benefits of the increased globalization that has been taking place since around...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
9 May 2013 Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen and Roger Williamson Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century, (edited by Adam Szirmai, Wim...
This paper evaluates the impact of an intervention to improve farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach to technology adoption in subsistence agriculture, using panel...
A sustainable pathway for Africa in the twenty-first century is laid out in the setting of the development of innovation capabilities and the capture of latecomer advantages. Africa has missed out on these possibilities in the twentieth century while...
Industrial policies have played an important role in successful development. Through these policies, governments intervene in the market’s sectoral allocation of resources and choice of technologies. Earlier industrial policies had a narrow remit and...
How does innovation impact on development? How, and under what conditions, do entrepreneurs in developing countries innovate? And what can be done to support innovation by entrepreneurs in developing countries? This policy brief addresses these...
A good deal is known about what makes for successful economic development, but very little is known about how to get there - that entails an understanding of the process of economic change. The paper first examines the sources of successful growth...
Employment in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia has grown more slowly than GDP over the last several decades. This means GDP per capita is rising. Vietnamese policymakers, however, are concerned that ongoing structural transformation is creating too few...
Using a rich panel dataset of small and medium scale manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) active in the manufacturing sector in Viet Nam, this paper investigates the drivers of firm productivity, focusing on the role played by international management...
Since the mid-1970s, Chile's exports have expanded at a fast rate, and the export basket has diversified considerably, away from copper towards other primary commodities and commodity-intensive manufactures. This paper explores the causal factors and...
The notion that good corporate governance means maximizing shareholder value derives from the neoclassical theory of the market economy. I explain why this perspective is highly problematic for understanding the operation and performance of the...
The benefits from the New Economy should accrue as improvements in productivity and economic growth. But while the use of information and communication technology seems to have had a substantial impact on the performance of the United States economy...
This paper investigates the process of adjustment in employment. A dynamic model is applied to a panel of six Tunisian manufacturing industries observed over a period of 25 years, from 1971 to 1996. Industries are assumed to adjust their labor inputs...
by Paul A David In the knowledge-driven economy the continuous search for new, reliable knowledge and the generation and absorbing of new information...
by Sailesh K. Jha Exports have been one of the key drivers of economic growth in several Asian DMCs in the 1990s. During this period the composition...
Tony Addison As the snow continues to lie deep across Helsinki, UNU-WIDER is putting the last touches to the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the...
Tony Addison We start the new year at a fast pace, preparing for the ReCom results meeting on ‘Aid and the Social Sectors’ in Stockholm on 13th March...
30 April 2013 Tony Addison As April closes, our thoughts turn to UNU-WIDER’s spring/summer programme. And it’s a busy one. June sees us back in...
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson At the UN headquarters in New York on 18 November 2014, Peter Timmer, emeritus professor from Harvard, showed how...
Using a rich panel dataset of SMEs active in the manufacturing sector in Vietnam, this paper investigates the drivers of firm productivity, focusing on the role played by international management standards certification. We develop and test the...
The celebration of the 30th Anniversary of UNU-WIDER presented the ideal opportunity to look back, take stock, and plan ahead. Where else can a group...
This paper reviews the innovative capabilities and absorptive capacities of African countries, and investigates whether they have played significant roles in the region’s slow and episodic economic growth. Results from cross-country regressions...
Although Denmark shares with the other four Nordic countries certain attributes, such as pragmatic protestant religion, small and homogenous population, strong social democratic parties and ambitious welfare states, it also has its own...
This paper studies the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of eleven Sub-Saharan African countries. The focus of the paper is on identifying those entrepreneurs’ attributes and firm characteristics...
The fisheries sector in sub-Saharan Africa has benefited from high and increasing amounts of foreign aid for over four decades. In the 1990s when evidence emerged that most stocks were overcapitalized and overfished, the effectiveness of fisheries...
Offers information about how three developed countries have utilized technology in their advancement in the post-World War II period. Japan, Finland and Greece are assessed in terms of economic growth and structural factors, along with an examination...
by Danny T. Quah For the last fifty years, economists and development practitioners have viewed the accumulation of physical capital-machines...
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development
Offers information about how three developed countries have utilized technology in their advancement in the post-World War II period. Japan, Finland and Greece are assessed in terms of economic growth and structural factors, along with an examination...
Part of Journal Special Issue Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Part of Journal Special Issue Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Relying on a recently developed decomposition framework, this paper explores spatial distribution of innovation capability in China. It is found that at the regional level, China's inequality in innovation capability increased from 1995 to 2004. At...
By 2000, over one-third of Silicon Valley’s high-skilled workers were foreign-born, and overwhelmingly from Asia. These US-educated engineers are transforming developmental opportunities for formerly peripheral regions as they build professional and...
Innovations spur science-based trade and industrial development in a fast changing pace of globalization. Knowledge accumulation and diffusion have been increasingly recognised as fundamental factors that play an important role in long-run economic...
Financial technology (FinTech) is a major force disrupting the structure of financial services in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and enabling access of...
Globalization has drastically improved access of technological latecomers to advanced technologies and provides a unique opportunity for low-income countries to raise per capita income. This paper shows that low-income countries as a group have in...
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Book The Rise of China and India
Only recently, 20 years after transition to a market system, has Russia regained a similar production level it had achieved on the eve of transition in 1991. This may sound surprising, given its low productivity under central planning which dropped...
Although very dynamic and flexible, Turkish SMEs are less innovative than their European counterparts. The analysis undertaken in this paper allows to assess whether this low level of innovative activities is related to a lack of entrepreneurial...
Entrepreneurship has been a topical issue in the business administration literature, but in the past decade a wave of interest can be observed on the role of entrepreneurship in the economic growth literature. This paper aims to highlight the various...
This piece synthesizes the development strategies of Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and draws some relevant lessons. Using a complex adaptive systems approach, strategic openness, a set of heterodox macroeconomic policies, creation of...
It is commonly believed that the business environment in developing countries does not allow productive technology-based entrepreneurship to flourish. In this paper, we draw on the experience of Indian software firms where entrepreneurial growth has...
This paper probes the drivers, dimensions, achievements, and outcomes of technological innovations carried out by SMEs in the auto components, electronics, and machine tool sectors of Bangalore in India. Further, it ascertains the growth rates of...
Literature on post-socialist transformation usually deals with the political, economic and social sides of it, although there have also been important changes in the field of technical advance in the last 20 years. One of capitalism’s main virtues is...
Part of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship and Conflict
This paper investigates the process of adjustment in employment. A dynamic model is applied to a panel of six Tunisian manufacturing industries observed over the period 1971–96. The adjustment process is industry and time specific. The adjustment...
The economic liberalization in India was expected to boost the economy, particularly the industrial sector through faster technological development. The Schumpeterian hypothesis, which studies the relationship between market structure variables such...
The feeble results of liberalization policies in Latin America are explained in terms of a multiple steady state model including a dynamic human development trap, endogenous technological change, technology transfer and trade. Divergent and...
The Internet is often anticipated to have disruptive competitive impacts, causing upstart firms to overthrow incumbent market leaders. This paper uses the UK IT consulting industry as a test case to see whether such competitive impacts of the...
During the last two decades a number of emerging economies have become deeply engaged in technology-intensive production. This has been reflected in their international trade specialization shifting from labour-intensive goods towards capital...
Using data from developing countries, this paper explores the nature and direction of the links between ICT diffusion and per capita income, trade and financial indicators, education, and freedom indicators. Internet hosts, Internet users, personal...
Schumepterian growth theory stresses the role of structural change in long run growth. Countries which increase the share of technology-intensive sectors in their economic structures benefit more from technological learning and innovation. In...
This paper examines the status of ICT in the Arab world and the potential opportunities and challenges that ICT is expected to create for development in the region. The analysis shows that, despite the recent growth in the demand for ICT, it has a...
The aim of this study is to evaluate the economic development potential for Namibia through IP telephony. First, background information on the telecommunication sector in Namibia is given. Then, the link between the ICT sector and GDP growth is being...
This paper shows how organizational, technical, and environmental factors affected firm decisions to adopt Internet technologies during the early years of the commercialization of the Internet. Organizations that had made prior investments in client...
The core industries of the new information economy are characterized by imperfect competition, asymmetric information or external effects. Thus, well-designed microeconomic policies, in the form of competition policies, technology policies or...
Both China and India, the emerging giants in Asia, have achieved significant economic development in recent years. China has enjoyed a high annual GDP growth rate of 10 per cent and India has achieved an annual GDP growth rate of 6 per cent since...
Concerns about the duration of China’s growth and hence the question of a permanent significant contribution of China to world economic growth relate, amongst other things, to the problem of reducing regional disparity in China. While China’s high...
This paper analyses both global and regional approaches to solving problems of energy security and ecological imbalance by addressing specifically the problems of China’s energy security. China’s growing energy dependence has become a major concern...
This paper addresses the question whether innovation is within reach for small enterprises in developing economies by studying four cases of new technologies, products and business practices in traditional craft in Northern Vietnam. The paper starts...
This paper reviews the literature on incubators in developed and developing countries. We show that the concept of incubators has evolved in time according to market and firm needs. Contemporary successful incubators are profit-oriented, provide a...
This paper addresses two prominent issues on the development of small enterprises in Africa. Which factors inhibit or foster innovation activities in small enterprises? Do innovators create more jobs? We use a large set of microenterprises survey...
Industrialization has long been seen as the answer to underdevelopment and poverty. First this led countries to follow protectionist import substitution policies but as these failed developing countries have opened up to trade and FDI and tried to...
There is enough consensus to show that India’s economic performance since 1991 is a direct result of the economic liberalization measures that have been put in place. One of the outcomes of this improved performance is the growth of innovations in...
This article first reviews the economic rationales for innovation policy. It then describes the Finnish innovation policy and policy making environment. The Finnish policy is evaluated from the point of view of fostering entrepreneurship. R&D...
Over the last two centuries, the experiences of the first wave of industrialized countries in Europe and the US, and the more recent experiences of the East Asian Tigers, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, India, and Vietnam, have illustrated the...
Part of Book Economies in Transition
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Wim Naudé and Adam Szirmai Nobody can be left in any doubt as to the importance of innovation for prosperity on reading[i] that ‘People living in the...
17 October 2013 David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers, and Michael Woolcock When asked why she wrote novels about poverty rather than gather what we would now...
22 August 2013 Han Ei Chew I am compelled to let a rattling skeleton out of the closet of ICT and development. But when I am done telling the...
Part of Book Inequality and Growth in Modern China
Part of Book Advancing Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
by Kevin J Stiroh The strength of the U.S. economy in the second half of the 1990s has led many observers to assert that something fundamental had...
A broad definition of innovation input is used, in which R&D is one of several sources of innovation. A quantitative innovation output measure is used in the analysis, which is based on a large representative sample of firms, including small firms...
The availability of the new internationally harmonized innovation survey data collected from OECD countries has created some interesting opportunities for studying the following two key areas: (1) The determinants of innovation behavior at firm level...
Part of Book Trade Policy, Industrialization, and Development
Part of Book Globalization, Marginalization and Development
Part of Book Institutional Change and Economic Development
Part of Book The International Mobility of Talent
Part of Book New Economy in Development
The Oxford Review of Economic Policy is a refereed journal which is published quarterly. Each issue concentrates on a current theme in economic policy, with a balance between macro- and microeconomics, and comprises an assessment and a number of...
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
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