The Role of Productive and Technological Capabilities on Export Dynamics in Developing Countries

Sebastián Vergara Marezco

Working Papers from United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs

Abstract: Productive and technological capabilities matter. The more conventional strands of the literature have emphasized them as major engines of export, growth and development. But how they matter is less clear, and many open questions remain on how capabilities influence export dynamics at microeconomic level. This paper empirically investigates their role on export dynamics in 40 developing countries between 2002 and 2012. In doing so, the paper exploits a country-sector-year database containing exporter-level statistical information. The empirical analysis shows that, within sectors, countries with higher productive capacities have more exporters, and the exporters are larger and charge higher prices for their products, even after controlling for level of development, size of the economy, commodity-dependency and other variables. The results also confirm a positive relationship between technological capabilities and diversification: within sectors, exporters in countries with stronger capabilities tend to export a higher number of products and to more destination markets. Finally, technological capabilities play a specific role in high-technology sectors, such as electronics, electrical machinery and equipment and pharmaceuticals. In these sectors, exporters from countries with higher R&D investments are more diversified in terms of destination markets. Thus, the paper shows that, even comparing exporters’ behaviour only among developing countries, stronger productive and technological capabilities are significantly related to the “extensive” and “intensive” margin of exports, diversification across products and destinations, and product quality; all crucial aspects of developing countries’ insertion in global markets. Overall, the paper underscores the role of capabilities not only on developing countries’ macroeconomic resilience to trade shocks, but also on their medium-term development prospects.

Keywords: productive capacities; technological capabilities; export dynamics; R&D investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2019/wp161_2019.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The role of productive and technological capabilities in export dynamics in developing countries (2021)
Working Paper: The Role of Productive and Technological Capabilities on Export Dynamics in Developing Countries (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:une:wpaper:161

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aimee Gao ().