STI policy in Latin America: a view from structural heterogeneity

Gabriela Dutrénit and Martín Puchet

Chapter 10 in A Research Agenda for Innovation and Development, 2026, pp 138-158 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The industrialization of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries has resulted in diverse productive profiles, high structural heterogeneity and high social inequality. In some countries, exports of medium- and high-tech manufactured products predominate, often connected to global value chains. Other countries are exporters of natural resources, with varying degrees of value addition. Modern sectors coexist with those lagging behind the technological frontier. Science, technology, and innovation (STI) policies tend to be decontextualized, and have not systematically considered the existing productive heterogeneity. By revisiting the contribution of Latin-American structuralism, using the lens of innovation economics, the objective of this chapter is to characterize structural heterogeneity in LAC and discuss the need to rethink STI policy to contextualize it so that it can make a greater contribution to the development process. For the empirical analysis, we focus on three countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, which contribute approximately 70% of LAC's gross domestic product.

Keywords: Structuralism; Development; Structural Heterogeneity; Innovation; Latin America; Innovation Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035344338
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035344345.00018 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
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:elg:eechap:23832_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().