Does technological change drive inclusive industrialization? - A review of major concepts and findings
T. Gries, R. Grundmann, I. Palnau & M. Redlin
#2015-044
Technical change is a major driving force for economic growth and
development, thus, technological change and innovations could be a
powerful process that opens-up opportunities to increase social welfare
and social benefits for societies. Whether in reality opportunities from
the process of technical change turn into real and inclusive benefits
for a society depends on a number of facts. Hence, in this contribution
we focus on the question of inclusiveness for the global process of
innovation and technical change. We discuss a number of questions such
as: Does technical change in DCs show specific characteristics that
affect different groups of labour asymmetrically? Further, for the
transfer of technologies to LDCs we ask: What are the channels of
technological transfer from DCs to LDCs that allow developing economies
to participate in benefits of technical change? How can a transfer of
technologies affect economic and social development? After identifying
such elements that link technical change to the question of
inclusiveness we describe the effects of technical change on
inclusiveness in DCs and LDCs. We try to answer questions like: Which
groups benefit more or less from gains of technical change? Were
benefits inclusive for a major share of the population or could
basically small groups take advantage? Which are the reasons that led to
non-inclusive growth for a larger share of the population.
Key words: technological change, global technological transfer,
structural transformation, development, inclusiveness
JEL Classification: F15, F16, I24, J31, O14, O15, O33