The Roots of System Expansion and the Role of Absorptive Capacity

Eduardo Albuquerque

Chapter Chapter 2 in Technological Revolutions and the Periphery, 2023, pp 11-39 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The investigation of the propagation of technological revolutions through the periphery needs a theoretical framework to capture the different forces of this process. This chapter suggests a dialogue among Kondratiev (Long cycles of economic conjuncture. In: Makasheva N, Samuels, WJ, Barnett, V (eds) The works of Nikolai D. Kondratiev, Vol 1. Pickering and Chato (1998), London, pp 25–60, 1926), Furtado (Underdevelopment: to conform or to reform. In: Meier G (ed) Pioneers of development. Second Series. Oxford University/World Bank, Oxford, pp 203–227, 1987), and Cohen and Levinthal (Econ J 99:569–596, 1989). Kondratiev elaborates how technical innovations are factors underlying long term changes and movements shaping the global capitalist system, and how the inclusion of new regions in the world economy is endogenous. Furtado discusses how the center-periphery divide is reshaped by the Industrial Revolution, a contribution to the understanding of how this divide might be reconfigured by subsequent technological revolutions. Cohen and Levinthal present the concept of absorptive capacity that is expanded – as shown in this chapter’s Appendix – to investigate how backward regions and countries need to create local resources to absorb the technologies developed abroad. These three approaches are integrated to introduce a dynamic between expansionary forces, emanating from the center, and assimilatory forces, developed at the periphery, that underpin the concrete propagation of technological revolutions through the periphery.

Keywords: Kondratiev and technical innovations; Furtado and the periphery; Cohen; Levinthal and absorptive capacity; Expansionary forces; Assimilatory forces (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

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:spr:conchp:978-3-031-43436-5_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031434365

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-43436-5_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Contributions to Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().