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The international diffusion of biotechnology: the arrival of developing countries

Author

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  • Jorge Niosi
  • Petr Hanel
  • Susan Reid

Abstract

According to conventional economic theory, countries tend to converge in economic and technological terms towards the leader. More recently, empirical approaches by economic historians (Abramovitz, Landes, Madison, Reinert) have found that while some countries are catching up, others are falling increasingly behind. Several theories compete to explain the precise mechanisms that explain how technological diffusion takes place. The paper reviews them and draws testable hypotheses for the study of international biotechnology diffusion. Biotechnologies are one of the leading sets of technologies developed in the late 20th century. They encompass applications in agriculture, chemicals, environment and pharmaceuticals. The United States has led the way in both scientific and industrial development of biotechnologies and these have quickly spread to Canada, Japan and Western Europe. Are the main developing countries adopting biotechnology? A study of the adoption of human health biotechnology in eight developing countries in Asia (China, India, Korea, and Singapore) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) was conducted, based on the analysis of in situ interviews, patents and scientific publication. The study shows a marked process of adoption and learning in science: each of the above-mentioned developing countries is increasing its share of world publication between 1996 and 2008. However, their share of biotechnology patents for the same period has barely increased. There are also regional differences in terms of sectoral concentration; Latin America, Argentina and Brazil are eager adopters of agricultural biotechnology and are moving up in the pharmaceutical records. Several Argentinean, Chinese, Indian, and South Korean pharmaceutical companies have been particularly active in the development of biogenerics. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Jorge Niosi & Petr Hanel & Susan Reid, 2012. "The international diffusion of biotechnology: the arrival of developing countries," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 767-783, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joevec:v:22:y:2012:i:4:p:767-783
    DOI: 10.1007/s00191-012-0284-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Klaus Ackermann & Simon D Angus & Paul A Raschky, 2017. "The Internet as Quantitative Social Science Platform: Insights from a Trillion Observations," Papers 1701.05632, arXiv.org.
    3. Loitongbam, Bishwanjit Singh, 2016. "Globalization and Innovation in the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry," MPRA Paper 75925, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 May 2016.
    4. Ad van den Oord & Arjen van Witteloostuijn, 2017. "The Population Ecology of Technology: An Empirical Study of US Biotechnology Patents from 1976 to 2003," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-26, January.
    5. Jorge Niosi & Maureen McKelvey, 2018. "Relating business model innovations and innovation cascades: the case of biotechnology," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(5), pages 1081-1109, December.

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