Modeling the building blocks of country-level absorptive capacity : comparing developed and emergent economies.
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Date
2021
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Abstract
Several studies analyzed the importance of absorptive
capacity (AC) to achieve economic development. How-
ever, to the best of our knowledge, no study compares
the building blocks (BBs) of AC between developed
and emergent economies. This paper aims to identify
and analyze the impact of the BBs on AC under dis-
tinct levels of development (i.e., developed vs. emerging
economies) using systematic literature review (SLR) and
econometrics. Specifically, both linear and nonlinear
analyses were employed. Our findings show that BBs in
developed and emergent regions are different. For both
groups, R&D, FDI (foreign direct investment), infras-
tructure, and HDI (human development index) variables
are BBs of AC. For developed economies, BBs also con-
template secondary education enrollments, the higher
education index, and the percentage of GDP spent on
higher education. Moreover, the thresholds of BBs also
differ between developed and emergent economies. This
identification of BBs and possible AC thresholds is valuable, as it provides information to set goals and strate-
gies before a foreign investment attraction policy. Thus,
the results facilitate the development of more suitable
strategies to enhance positive productivity spillovers
and avoid negative spillovers whenever possible. These
results show that policymakers cannot employ the same
policies for the development of developed and emerging
countries.
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Keywords
Human capital, Research and development, Threshold regression
Citation
SILVEIRA, N. J. C. et al. Modeling the building blocks of country-level absorptive capacity: comparing developed and emergent economies. Bulletin of Economic Research, v. 73, 2021. Disponível em: <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/boer.12319>. Acesso em: 24 maio 2022.