Innovation, institutions and development: a critical review and grounded heterodox economic analysis of late-industrialising contexts

摘要

This paper critically reviews dominant approaches to the economics of innovationin contemporary developing societies, namely new institutional economics (NIE)and National Innovation Systems (NIS). Both traditions explain capitalist developmentin late-industrialising countries using underlying assumptions and logicsof advanced industrialised societies with respect to transaction costs, path dependence,the nature and structure of institutions and economic history. At their core,both approaches proffer ideal-type institutions as an essentialist route to technologicaland productivity improvement akin to a staged theory of development. TheNIS framework became dominant in scholarly and policy circles but has neglectedthe implication that the concept was developed at the Organisation of EconomicCooperation and Development during the emergence of first-stage neoliberalism.NIE has become an essential analytical toolkit of mainstream economists andinternational organisations promoting competitiveness in developing countries.Analyses of the economic performance of developing countries have thus divergedfrom structural perspectives on development, attributing instead lacklustre technologicaldeepening to certain national features, institutional gaps or linkage failures.The paper exposes narrow assumptions and illustrates that the ‘transition costs’that arise from new socio-institutional configurations during the development processinduces firms and other actors to compete for rents. Conversely, power asymmetries,historical factors and constraining forces in the global capitalist systemgenerate unevenness in productive forces and technological progress. The paperproposes a political economy of technological change that considers the structural,technical and socio-political interdependencies and tensions that underpin transformativepolicies to improve technological, coordination and collective capabilitiesin the economic system.