IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v56y2020i4p657-679.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Innovation Strategies Matter: Latin America’s Middle-Income Trap Meets China and Globalisation

Author

Listed:
  • Eva Paus

Abstract

Productive transformation from commodity production to higher value added activities is at the heart of the transition from a middle-income to a high income economy. The key is the development of domestic innovation capabilities to move up the value chain on a broad enough basis to generate sustained productivity growth. Since WW II few countries have achieved this transition. Under the market-led strategies of the past 30–40 years, Latin American countries have become trapped at the middle-income level. Informed by a structural-evolutionary approach, I investigate the reasons for the poor productivity performance in the region. I analyse the ‘within’ and ‘across’ sector sources of productivity growth in nine Latin American countries over the period 1950–2011, compare it with China’s, and link the outcomes to public policy, both with respect to state-led and market-led strategies, and to specific policies aimed at advancing innovation. I argue that the current globalisation process, particularly the rise of China, have shifted the goal posts for middle-income countries and increased the urgency to develop domestic innovation capabilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Eva Paus, 2020. "Innovation Strategies Matter: Latin America’s Middle-Income Trap Meets China and Globalisation," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(4), pages 657-679, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:56:y:2020:i:4:p:657-679
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2019.1595600
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2019.1595600
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2019.1595600?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Enrique García R & Alvaro Mendez, 2021. "Mañana Today: A Long View of Economic Value Creation in Latin America," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(3), pages 410-413, May.
    2. Carlos Bianchi & Fernando Isabella & Santiago Picasso, 2023. "Growth slowdowns at middle income levels: Identifying mechanisms of external constraints," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 288-305, May.
    3. Tingting Yu & Ah Rong & Feilong Hao, 2022. "Avoiding the middle‐income trap: The spatial–temporal effects of human capital on regional economic growth in Northeast China," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 536-558, June.
    4. Carlos Bianchi & Fernando Isabella & Anaclara Martinis & Santiago Picasso, 2023. "Varieties of middle-income trap: heterogeneous trajectories and common determinants," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 23-16, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    5. Eva Paus & Mike Robinson, 2024. "The Challenge of Productivity-Based Development: Innovation Gaps and Economic Structure in Latin America," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(2), pages 277-305, April.
    6. Avlijas, Sonja & Gartzou-Katsouyanni, Kira, 2024. "Firm-centered approaches to overcoming semi-peripheral constraints," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123742, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:56:y:2020:i:4:p:657-679. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.