Institutional basis for research boom: From catch-up development to advanced economy

Historical best practice emphasizes that the decision for large-scale R&D investment is important to catch-up growth. It is desirable in most developing countries to establish coherence between technological forecasting and science, technology, and innovation policies. This study demonstrates that national foresight has disadvantages in implementing such policies because of insufficient monetized information with discriminant power for investment. To compensate for such disadvantages, a logic model is indispensable, and can be achieved by subsequent foresight at the time of each decision rather than by one-time national foresight. The example of the Korean government emphasizes that decision-making involving consecutive value-based technological forecasting can act as an institutional framework to progress from catch-up development to being an advanced economy. Despite a tradition against aggressive R&D investment in Korea, quantitative ex-ante evaluations with a feasible value chain have given the financial authorities' confidence. This is what has made Korea's research boom possible. If developing or transition countries plan to achieve catch-up growth by expanding R&D investment, the institutional cases in this study will be an important reference.