Drivers de catching up: os casos da América Latina e Ásia no pós - 1980

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the divergent trajectories of economic growth that the Latin American and Asian countries presented after the 1980s from a catching up, forging ahead and falling behind perspective, developed from Abramovitz's theory (1986). and Fagerberg (1988). Using a threshold regression model, countries were divided into staggered groups according to the technological gap. Making it easier to see the impacts that human capital variables and investments in research and development have on the per capita GDP of countries in each group. From the threshold regression thresholds we observed the dynamics of movement of countries between the technological groups over the period studied, ie, which approached the technological frontier appearing in the group of advanced countries such as Japan, Hong Kong, Chile and Argentina. and which distances remained remaining in the backward group such as Bolivia, Peru, India and Indonesia.