Innovation is often seen as carried out by highly educated labour in R&D intensive companies with strong ties to leading centers of excellence in the scientific world. Seen from this angle innovation is a typical “first world” activity. There is, however, another way to look at innovation...

This paper explores the possibility that technological capabilities, to lead to development, need to be accompanied by a broader set of “social capabilities”, reflecting not only the quality of governance but also the spread of values, beliefs and institutions that encourage members of...

Innovation is, as Joseph Schumpeter once pointed out, above all a combinatory phenomenon. Success in accessing knowledge and exploiting it in a way that is beneficial for development depends on the ability to combine many different skills and resources, of which many will be external to the...

Why do some countries grow much faster, and have much better trade performance, than other countries? What are the crucial factors behind such differences, and what can governments do in order to improve the relative position of their economies? This paper outlines a synthetic framework, based...

This paper addresses one of the oldest and most controversial issues in economics: Why do some countries succeed in catching up, while others fall behind? In recent years the quality and availability of data on different aspects of development have improved a lot. Attempting to exploit this...

This paper focuses on the role of capabilities for economic development. In recent years data on different aspects of development have improved a lot. This provides new opportunities for in-depth research on capabilities and their measurement. The analysis, based on a factor analysis on 25...

This paper analyzes factors shaping technological capabilities in United States and European countries, and shows that the differences between the two continents in this respect are much smaller than commonly assumed. The analysis demonstrates a tendency towards convergence in technological...

This paper analyzes factors that shape the technological capabilities of individual U.S. states and European countries, which are arguably comparable policy units. The analysis demonstrates convergence in technological capabilities from 2000 to 2007. The results indicate that social...