New High-Technology Exporters
Several nations are rapidly becoming more competitive in international high-technology trade. Large ongoing investments in S&T, education, and R&D[31]
This section presents four indicators that may be relevant to the long-term potential of developing economies to maintain or improve their competitiveness in international high-technology markets. National scores on each indicator are computed using both statistical data and systematic expert assessments (Porter et al. 2005).[32]
- Technological infrastructure. This term refers to the social and economic institutions that help a nation develop, produce, and market new technology. This indicator combines statistical data on the number of scientists employed in R&D and electronic data processing purchases with expert assessments of technical training and education, industrial R&D, and technological mastery.
- Socioeconomic infrastructure. This term refers to the social and economic institutions necessary to sustain and advance technology-based development. This indicator combines statistical data on educational attainment with expert assessments of national policies toward multinational investment and capital mobility.
- Productive capacity. This term refers to the physical and human resources devoted to manufacturing products and the efficiency with which these resources are used. This indicator combines statistical data on electronics production with expert assessments of the management capability and indigenous supply of skilled labor and component parts for high-technology manufactured goods.
- National orientation.. This term refers to national policies, institutions, and public opinion that help a nation become technologically competitive. This indicator combines a statistical measure of investment risk with expert assessments of national strategy, implementation, entrepreneurship, and attitudes toward technology.
In their present form, these four indicators have been tracked for a relatively stable set of developing and industrialized countriessince the early 1990s. Because these indicators were designed to forecast long-term changes in national high-technology competitiveness, especially among developing nations, analyses of whether and how they predict future competitiveness and how they compare to other measures remain preliminary and inconclusive (Porter et al. 2001).[33]
This section examines composite scores of the four indicators in 2007 for 14 developing countries, classified as middle or low income by the World Bank. The developing countries were divided into groups of larger and smaller economies according to their 2004 GDP in 1990 purchasing power parities: larger being economies that are greater or equal to $750 billion and smaller being less than $750 billion.
According to its 2007 composite score, China is the highest ranked of the six large developing economies examined
Russia’s ranking has fluctuated over the last decade
Among the eight smaller developing economies examined, Malaysia ranks first in future high-technology export potential, followed by Poland and Hungary
Notes
[31] See chapter 2 for a discussion of international higher education trends and chapter 4 for a discussion of trends in U.S. R&D.
[32] For details on survey and indicator construction, see Porter et al. (2005).
[33] For information on the validity and reliability testing the indicators have undergone, see Porter et al. (2001, 2005) and Roessner, Porter, and Xu (1992).