Investing in Ideas: Policies to Foster Innovation

Gustavo Crespi, Eduardo Fernández-Arias and Ernesto Stein
Additional contact information
Eduardo Fernández-Arias: University of California
Ernesto Stein: University of California

Chapter 3 in Rethinking Productive Development, 2014, pp 61-106 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Since the pioneering work of Solow (1957), technological change has been credited with explaining a substantial share of economic growth. Indeed, recent evidence for the United States shows that investments in R&D—a proxy for the innovation effort of a nation—made up 40 percent of the productivity growth observed during the postwar era (Reikard, 2011). Based on these findings, several Latin American and Caribbean countries have established and implemented public policies aimed at enhancing innovation. In practice, the first explicit interventions to encourage innovation by the private sector emerged even earlier, toward the end of World War II. Although many of these policies were either abandoned or dramatically downsized under the structural reforms inspired by the Washington Consensus, the disappointing results in terms of productivity growth have led several countries in the region to reintroduce policies to stimulate innovation and encourage technology adoption.

Keywords: Human Capital; Innovation Policy; Impact Evaluation; Coordination Failure; Caribbean Country (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-1-137-39399-9_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137393999

DOI: 10.1057/9781137393999_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().