Trade, Technology, and International Competitiveness

Abstract

The Economic Development Institute (EDI) was established by the World Bank in 1955 to train officials concerned with development planning, policymaking, investment analysis, and project implementation in member developing countries. At present the substance of the EDI's work emphasizes macroeconomic and sectoral economic policy analysis. Through a variety of courses, seminars, and workshops, most of which are given overseas in cooperation with local institutions, the EDI seeks to sharpen analytical skills used in policy analysis and to broaden understanding of the experience of individual countries with economic development. Although the EDI's publications are designed to support its training activities, many are of interest to a much broader audience. EDI materials, including any findings, interpretations, and conclusions, are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, to its affiliated organizations, or to members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. Because of the informality of this series and to make the publication available with the least possible delay, the manuscript has not been edited as fully as would be the case with a more formal document, and the World Bank accepts no responsibility for errors. Some sources cited This book owes a great deal of debt to the many people who helped to bring it to publication, in particular to my fellow authors: Martin Bell, Carl Dahlman, Sanjaya Lall, Keith Pavitt and Kenji Takeuchi. The production of a multiauthor volume, I have learned, is not a simple task, especially when the authors are separated by large geographical distances. I am grateful to my coauthors for collaborating in this effort and for their consideration and promptness in responding to my many requests. This book could not have come into being without the moral support and encouragement of Peter Knight during the organization of the seminars dealing with the issues of trade, technology, and international competitiveness and, later, during the actual preparation of the volume. Isabel Guerrero, who succeeded Peter as Chief of the National Economic Management Division in the EDI, was equally generous in her support and encouragement during the book's final stages. The debt to Michael Scherer is enormous. He reviewed drafts of the volume with interest and care and raised important questions of reasoning, presentation, and factual accuracy. Richard Nelson, who read an earlier version of the volume, served as both critic and guide. Bruce Scott reviewed the penultimate version of the book; his insights into industrial development strategy helped to sharpen the volume's reasoning. Sikander Rahim offered valuable advice on clarifying concepts and improving style. Naturally, none of these readers can be held accountable for the errors and weaknesses that remain in the work. Manjula Maudgal and Andrew Mountford provided research assistance, compiling the background data and running the regressions for Chapter 2.

Contextual Factors Affecting the Innovation Performance of Manufacturing SMEs in Korea: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

“…In addition to networking, as previous studies supported [59][60][61][62]66,67], skill and technology acquisition was positively associated with SMEs' innovation capacity (β = 0.647), which confirmed H3a. Therefore, as Knight [61] supported, acquiring skills and technology influenced SMEs' innovation capacity directly.…”

“…In addition, technology acquisition from external institutions in more advanced countries is obviously another important contextual factor for firms from industrializing countries attempting to catch up technologically [59,60]. According to Knight, technology acquisition refers to "efforts by management to acquire technologies that will augment the firm's ability to compete in international markets, via the creation of superior products and/or processes" [61] (p. 161).…”

“…In addition, based on prior studies [59,60,62,64], we assessed skill and technology acquisition as a contextual factor with a dummy variable for the firm's machine, equipment, and software acquisition (1 = acquired); and a dummy variable for firms' on-the-job training (1 = performed). Another contextual factor affecting firms' internal innovation capacity is government and public policies.…”

Technology, Innovation and National Manufacturing Competitiveness

“…From the macroeconomic standpoint, several scholars have provided different interpretation of the competitiveness concept. Haque (1995) define national competitiveness as the ability of a country to produce goods and services that meet the test of the international markets and simultaneously to maintain and expand the real income and also rise in welfare level of its citizen. World Economic Forum (1996) refers to national competitiveness as the ability of a country to achieve a sustainable high growth rate in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.…”

A conceptual assessment model to identify phase of industrial cluster life cycle in Indonesia

“…This is characterized by differences in products as a result of specialization in workers' competences or product differentiation from that of the previous cluster. This leads to changes in markets, production processes, and Porter, 1990;Kotler et al, 1997;Maggioni, 2002Maggioni, , 2004Andersson et al, 2004;Menzel & Fornahl, 2007Maggioni & Riggi, 2008 Broad range of marketing area of industrial cluster's products Porter, 1985Porter, , 1990Ulhaque, 1995;Kotler et al, 2005;Porter & Schwab, 2008;Schwab, 2010 …”