The Role of R&D in Industrial Policy: Rise and fall of a research driven strategy for industrialisation

R&D has played a central role in Norwegian public industrial policy for only a relatively short period. Before 1963, there was little interest in linking technological research policy to a wider national industrial strategy. During the mid 1960s, attempts were made to link public research more closely to industrial development, and the state became more engaged in funding industrial R&D. During the 1980s, governments increased public industrial R&D funding substantially, and for a short period of time research became a core element in national industrial policy. However, from the early 1990s the situation again changed. Public research policy lost its significance in wider national industrial strategies.

Trade And Industrialisation After Globalisation’s 2nd Unbundling: How Building And Joining A Supply Chain Are Different And Why It Matters

Revolutionary transformations of industry and trade occurred from 1985 to the late-1990s – the regionalisation of supply chains. Before 1985, successful industrialisation meant building a domestic supply chain. Today, industrialisers join supply chains and grow rapidly because offshored production brings elements that took Korea and Taiwan decades to develop domestically. These changes have not been fully reflected in “high development theory” – a lacuna that may lead to misinterpretation of data and inattention to important policy questions.

A New Nexus Between Foreign Direct Investment, Industrial and Innovation Policies

This paper deals with the interplay between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the industrial and innovation policies of host developing economies. It aims to redefine the nexus between these different, though yet strongly interconnected policy areas, by bringing the affiliates of multinational corporations already established in a host economy to the first level of analysis. It argues that host country governments should concentrate on enhancing innovativeness and development of existing foreign-owned affiliates, instead of striving to attract higher volumes of FDI inflows.Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, Foreign-owned Affiliates, Industrial Policy, Innovation Policy

Social Capital and Industrial Transformation

This paper is an exploration of the social capital needs of industrial development. 'Social capital' attracts considerable attention in socio-political analysis and we are beginning to see its application to development economics. There has not, as far as I know, been any attempt to apply it to the determinants of successful industrialisation in the developing world. This essay is a preliminary sketch of the concepts rather than a report on research findings or a complete analysis with specific policy recommendations. Nevertheless, it illustrates the value and significance of bringing social capital concepts to bear on specific aspects of development

ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: an Overview of Opportunities and Developments

Both developed and developing countries face many environmental challenges, including climate change, improving energy efficiency and waste management, addressing air pollution, water quality and scarcity, and loss of natural habitats and biodiversity. Drawing on the existing literature, this paper presents an overview of how the Internet and the ICT and related research communities can help tackle environmental challenges in developing countries. The review focuses on the role of ICTs in climate change mitigation, mitigating other environmental pressures, and climate change adaptation.information and communication technology (ICT), environment, climate change, mitigation, adaptation.

Speaking Truth To Power: Why Energy Distribution, More Than Generation, Is Africa's Poverty Reduction Challenge

This paper revisits the roles that energy plays in poverty reduction. First, while energy does not reduce poverty itself, it delivers energy services. These services can improve poor people's welfare both directly by enhancing their own productivity, education and health, and indirectly by changing the economy around them. The paper provides a simplified framework for thinking about these energy services, and then reviews the literature on their importance to poverty reduction. From this framework, we draw a series of three important conclusions about energy priorities and their implications for poverty reduction and development.Tackling energy poverty will have less to do with ambitious expansion of electricity capacity, and more to do with ambitious distribution of energy services to poor people.Expansion in centralized power generation serves industry, the services sector and already-connected households, before it serves the poor.Distributed, clean energy interventions are best suited to tackling energy poverty -- and poverty more generally

Building knowledge-based economies in Africa: Asystematic review of policies and strategies

Compared to other regions of the world, Africa is lagging in its drive toward knowledge-based economies. This study systematically reviews the literature in order to highlight the policies and strategies with which African countries can accelerate their current drive towards building knowledge-based economies. These are discussed in terms of three pillars of the World Bank’s knowledge economy framework. They are the indices for: (i) education and skilled population, (ii) information and communication technology and (iii) economic incentives and institutional regime.Economic

Sectoral innovation performance in the knowledge intensive services

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Assessment of industrial performance and the relationship between skill, technology and input-output indicators in Sudan

This paper examines the industrial performance indicators and the relationships between skill indicators; between skill, upskilling, technology and input-output indicators in Sudan. Our findings are consistent with the stylized facts in the new growth literature, concerning the correlation between skill indicators: education, experience and wages and also concerning the positive complementary relationships between technology, skill and upskilling. Different from the Sudanese literature, a novel element in our analysis is that we use a new primary data from the firm survey (2010) and we provide a new contribution and fill the gap in the Sudanese literature by examining the industrial performance indicators defined by three different sets of economic and productivity indicators, activity indicators and profitability indicators in Sudan. One advantage and interesting element in our analysis in this paper is that we confirm three hypotheses on the relationships between skill indicators; between skill, upskilling, technology and input-output indicators and industrial performance indicators using new primary data from the firm survey (2010) in Sudan. We verify our first hypothesis that irrespective of the observed differences across the industrial firms, the low skill levels - due to high share of unskilled workers - lead to skills mismatch and most probably contribute to decline of labour productivity and industrial performance indicators. We confirm our second hypothesis that an increase in skill levels and firm size lead to improved relationships between actual and required education and experience; between actual education, experience and wages; and between skill, upskilling and technology (ICT) and also improved industrial performance indicators. We also support our third hypothesis concerning the inconclusive relationships between new technology (the use of ICT) and input-output indicators at the micro/firm level. Finally, we provide a new contribution to the Sudanese literature, since we explain that the performance of the industrial firms is most probably immensely undermined by the shortage of skilled workers and also by the lack of entrepreneur perspective. We recommend further efforts to be made to improve adequate availability of skilled workers and commitment to entrepreneur perspective for improvement of labour productivity, industrial performance and therefore, economic growth and development in Sudan.Industrial performance, skill, technology, input-output, firm size, industry, Sudan