Growth, development and new technologies in the ICT era
Mario Cimoli, ECLAC
This seminar will be based on two papers. The first one aims at building bridges between evolutionary microeconomics and the structuralist theory of economic development, trying to combine both approaches in a systematic way. It is suggested that reducing the technology gap requires persistent supply side efforts for adapting and improving the use of capital equipment and the sequential development of various forms of tacit and incremental learning, associated with the transfer and acquisition of foreign technology. In addition, the expansion of employment along with labour productivity is related to the diversification of the economy, the expansion of high-tech activities and exports and the consequent dynamism of domestic and international demand. This paper argues that technological and industrial policies should take into consideration both dimensions of the development process.
The second paper revisits the structuralist ideas on trade and growth and suggests (based on the Prebisch’s principle of implicit reciprocity) that policies for promoting structural change in the periphery may lead to higher global growth and a better income distribution across countries. The paper discusses the inter-relations and complementarities that exist between autonomous expenditure and industrial and technology policies in the long run. With this objective, we develop a structuralist growth model in which the technology gap and the growth rate of the domestic autonomous expenditure are endogenously determined in a two-country (centre and periphery) international economy.
About the speaker
Mario Cimoli is the Director of the Division of Production, Productivity and Management at the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). He obtained his Ph.D. at the SPRU, University of Sussex (1992), with a thesis that analyses the effect of technological gaps and trade on growth in developing economies and since 1992 he has served as a Professor of Economics at the University of Venice (Ca’Foscari). In 2004 he was appointed co-director (with Giovanni Dosi and Joseph Stiglitz) of two task forces: Industrial Policy and Intellectual Property Rights Regimes for Development (Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, New York). He was also awarded the Philip Morris Chair of International Business (2004) at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, University of Pisa. He holds speeches, writes and publishes books and articles on economic issues, including industrial as well as science, technology and innovation related topics.
Venue: UNU-MERIT Conference Room
Date: 11 April 2011
Time: 12:30 - 13:30 CET
